General Writing

• In my last update, I mentioned that I was hoping I’d have a decent amount of time to write in November because of the way my schedule was working out. I was supposed to have November 16-30 off from students I’d have to grade and lesson plan for while I covered absences in the building, and that I was anticipating being on remote learning again at some point in the future.
• I ended up covering a sixth grade science class that had no lesson plans and that I had to put in grades for, so in addition to preparing for my own classes in the next cycle, I had to prep for a subject and curriculum I don’t teach with no textbook. Fun.
• I also got exposed to Covid around November 9-10 through school and had to quarantine at home. November 13 was my last day in the building, and then my entire school kind of…went crazy. The school got two more positive cases and shut down on Wednesday while the entire district closed as of Friday, November 20. We’re on remote learning through AT LEAST January 8 with a return on January 11.
• That’s…a lot to process, to be honest. My nieces were individually exposed at their schools, so my hometown district closed, and my sister needed to be tested after being exposed by her best friend. Thankfully, we all tested negative but it was a lot more stressful than I thought it was going to be (and I was expecting stress.)
• Flash Fiction kind of went all over the place–we’ll get into that–and I didn’t quite hit the deadline I needed for Fool Me Twice. However, I still participated in NaNoWriMo and wrote about 62k for FMT over the entire month. That was pretty awesome and a silver lining to an otherwise crazy month.

Patreon, Site & Channel

• I had hoped to make some NaNoWriMo videos like I did last month, but it honestly never manifested. I do have plans for 2021 to be a bit more regular with content, but I also understand it’s not the main draw to my site.
• The site work is also completely on hiatus until at least winter break, if not spring break.
• Patreon Tiers are going to be revised starting January 1, 2021 to better reflect benefits and add some more. I’ll have them ready sometime in December.

Individual Story

Flash Fiction

• My Flash Fiction schedule was really hard to maintain in November. It became really sporadic and I think in some ways, the quality for some of the stories suffered. I definitely think while the 20 minute sprints are easier to fit into my schedule, the 60 minute efforts are better. I won’t be bring them back until I can devise a schedule that works in 60 minutes for each update.
• I’m thinking that means Flash Fiction might not return until 2021, so we’ll see what we’ll see.

Fool Me Twice, Book 1

• I started writing Fool Me Twice on October 1 with a deadline of November 30. Honestly — a few things go differently and if it’s a normal year, the draft is finished on time if not early. But I really never caught up from getting that job on September 30. I needed to be further along in October, and , well, I probably didn’t need the pandemic stress.
• That being said, the great thing is that the story itself is going really great. I’m so happy with the progress so far. I’ve finished 20 chapters — I still have roughly 14 chapters left to write. Today is November 30. I should finish this draft around December 14. Two weeks over my scheduled time — that’s not too bad.
• I can’t tell you now if that means I’m missing the February deadline. I don’t think I will. The draft is in good shape so far — while it needs work, it doesn’t need the top down, drag out revisions that Mad World Book 3 needed, and I understand my process better than I did when I revised Broken Girl last spring.
• I also didn’t set a specific day for posting. Since I publish on novels on Tuesdays, I could go with Feb 2, 9, 16, or the 23. It’s more likely to be like 16 or 23. I’ll keep you in the loop on that.

Mad World, Book 4

• I haven’t looked at this since early October. At that time, I was creating the structure of the second draft of Book 4 — what scenes and chapters, etc. Once that’s done, I’ll be able to make better revision notes. What stays, what needs to be rewritten. Once I know how much work needs to be going into it, I can put it more firmly on my schedule.
• I actually plan to give myself two weeks off from FMT between December 15-December 31 and distract myself by digging into Book 4 which will make FMT feel fresher when I open it back up to revise.
• I’m hoping to write this book in the background, but it also might be my June/July project (which makes it year 5 lol for series — please let 2021 be the last year)

For the Broken Girl, Book 2

• I’m still putting this into production after I complete the alpha draft for FMT. I plan to work on the Discovery Draft from December 15-January 31. After working on FMT’s Discovery Draft, I am confident that a prolonged Discovery process put me in the best possible position to get more than 110k written for FMT in eight weeks.
• As long as FMT is ready to go with revisions and I’m comfortable, Broken Girl’s alpha draft starts on Feb 1, with a deadline of March 31, and a publication of May/June depending on revisions needed.

Thanks so much for reading and following! I’ll be back at the end of the year with my 2020 Year in Review & 2021 Year Ahead (instead of January Update). I love all of you so much!

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