As always, I’d like to begin this week’s progress report by thanking all of you awesome people who’ve followed, liked and/or commented on my blog!

Here are this week’s stats:

Words Rewritten This Week: 4,849

Total Word Count for Second Draft: 77,134

Days Until Beginning the Third Draft: 23

Thoughts?

Here I am again, with another completed draft of this book. There were no tears this time, only relief. After the week-ish break I took from rewriting at Christmas, I was afraid I would be late finishing the Second Draft. The idea of that stressed me out for two reasons:

• I was going to be late finishing something. I’m never late. I was born a month early. I’m at least 15 minutes early for everything. I AM NEVER LATE.
• In case you missed my panic attack a couple of weeks ago, I’ve realized I need to tighten up my writing schedule to account for how long it takes a book to go through the copyright process, so I REALLY can’t be late.

So what is the plan this break (because I am DEFINITELY still taking a break from this thing)? Well:

From now until February 11th, I am going to let my book rest. I believe it will be easier this time, as I have a few other irons in the fire at the moment. Also…not to say I’m getting bored with this story, I’m definitely not. But I have written it twice now. And I have edit it at least three more times before I’m sending it off for copyright (one more self-edit, one edit after getting beta-reader feedback, and one more after the professional editor goes through it). So at this point, I’m definitely okay with taking these breaks between edits/drafts.

Like last time, I will need to have this draft printed for when I work through it again. I also need to check with my beta-readers to make sure they’re still open to the task in mid-April.

As mentioned in last week’s progress report, I intend to write a short story for submission into a contest, so I will be focusing my creative energy there.

And books? Of course you know I have some books I’d like to read during this break. Unfortunately, I had to shelf the Captive Prince series. I know, shocking, but after talking about it so much with the rash of friends who’ve recently read it, I’ve been feeling a little gorged on the series. I still love my princes and it is still my favorite book series, no question. But at the moment, I’m craving something else. I’ve picked up and put down several books in the past week, and I believe I’ve finally settled on the Bay City Paranormal Investigations series by Ally Blue (still m/m, don’t worry). Ms. Blue is currently in the process re-releasing the series, one by one, so it will be a while before I can read the whole series, but I believe it is the palate-cleanser I’ve been looking for. I know the first three are the only ones currently out, and I’d like to read them during this break.

So what am I going to do with this blog? Well, I’m really liking the balance in my life with posting once a week, so I believe I will continue doing this during the break, and for the foreseeable future. I will likely step posts back up as I begin to hit major milestones and I move closer to release (shooting for May/June of 2019), but for now, this works well for me.

Note to Self

You’ve done it. Again. Like there was ever any doubt.