Week 19: 7155 words

Another week where writing related activities devoured actual writing. I've been working behind the scenes on the Hillsborough Comics Fair most of the week. I also had to put together a newsletter, since I hadn't done one since March. To put out the newsletter, I had to do a few more edits of the DRAGONSGATE Sneak Peek, and make a temporary cover to go with it. I also listened to more audio chapters of Covenant, and booked hotel rooms for upcoming cons. I do give myself some "word count" for some of these activities, like the revisions and newsletter, but except for about half a chapter of Nobody Nowhere, I haven't produced much new fiction.

The upcoming weeks don't look much more promising for production. The Comics Fair is going to be taking a little bit of time every day through May 25. I also have the Tidewater Comicon in Virginia Beach next weekend, and we'll be doing some touristy stuff on the way up, so that will be four days on the road.

By the way, I'm not complaining about organizing the Comics Fair. I've taken part in several cons organized by libraries, so helping my own hometown library get one set up suits my particular skill set, and anything I can do to get more people to visit a library makes me feel like a responsible citizen helping to maintain civilization in good working order. I don't really have the skills I would need to find a cure for cancer, but getting comic books into the hands of kids and maybe instilling a life long love of a true American art form? That's right in my wheelhouse. Also, organizing the con helps me realize how much hard work other volunteers to for the cons I attend. I don't know if I can call what I'm doing paying it forward, but hopefully I'm at least paying it sideways.

Back to word counts: I'm already making time on my calendar later in the year for a few "writing retreats" later in the year, where I go to an undisclosed location to get away from distractions and spend days just typing for a full week. My goal this year of 10k words a week was always going to be about averages. I'm going to have a few weeks of 30k plus words. I've had weeks in the past where I've gotten out close to 60k words in a week. I admire writers who can follow the slow and steady route, but a lot of my favorite books were written when I just closed out the rest of the world for a few days and did a full immersion in a project.

In other news, a few weeks back I mentioned doing a guest blog. It was published this week, and here's the link. It's an essay about my own personal experiences of entering some of the dream worlds where my Dragon Apocalypse novels unfold, and the treasures that I found there.