• Short Story Writing: It had been my intent to finish the rough draft for “Evaporated Ocean” today, but it didn’t happen. Got sidetracked completely by other things, namely outlining the novel. I’m trying to break up my day into three big chunks: short stories in the morning (Planning, writing, and editing), novel in the afternoon, and reading in the evening. Rigid adherence to this will likely be impossible, but it’s a good goal to push for. If I run out of time for one activity, shift gears to the next activity and keep going. Make up for lost time later.
• Short Story Editing: I’m 3/4 through the first round of edits of “The Lone Blue Strand” for Fictionvale. I expect to finish the last couple of scenes tomorrow, and then Friday I’ll go back through it again to see if there were any soft spots that I either didn’t touch on, or didn’t notice before.
• Novel Outlining: I’ve finished the first scene-by-scene outline for the first Wendigo novel. The story is currently coming in at around 90,000 planned words, or 360 pages. Already I see areas where this can be tightened and made more dramatic, so I’m looking forward to the next run-through on the outline. I’m going to continue forward with the plan from Karen Wiesner’s “First Draft in 30 Days” and see where we get with that before I go back and edit the outline. Once again, it’s getting me excited for the actual drafting process to come. But, I don’t want to rush it. The next two weeks or so are critical to getting this outline as close to perfect as possible. That’ll mean a lot less time wasted in the drafting – and then editing – process.
• Nonfiction Reading: I’m halfway through Writing the Blockbuster Novel by Albert Zuckerman. This book is great. The chapter I’m currently wrapping up is the longest one detailing the outlining process. He uses Ken Follett’s The Man From St. Petersburg as his example, and goes through four different outlines for the book. It’s amazing what changed between the original draft idea and the final outline. It’s also heartening for anyone writing something for the first time (Be it their first novel ever or just the first time on this particular novel) because there are a lot of weak areas in the original draft, things I noticed immediately that I could tie into the outline I’m working on currently.
• Fiction Reading: Three chapters into my rereading of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. Still as great as I remember it, and it’s been years. I’m trying to go through it at a slower pace this time around, to analyze story structure, character development, dialogue, etc. So far, an illuminating journey.

Blog Posts: 869
Planning and outlining: 2,847
Short Fiction: 0
Novel Fiction: 0
Salable words: 0

Total Fiction for Month: 10,550

Total Salable for Month: 1,000

Total Fiction for Challenge Year: 10,550

Total Salable for Challenge Year: 1,000