Story Post: PMF 7, Chapter Four (Patreon)

Writing a book takes as long as it takes. Any story, really. It's done when it's done.

Word counts aren't really a great metric for progress. You can set a daily or weekly goal to hold yourself accountable, and that may help. But tracking the word count can also lead to padding the text or stretching it out to hit the finish line. Sure, you've hit the number, but your actual daily production may not be very good. And sometimes—as I warned about November in an earlier post—life gets in the way. (Can you tell where this is leading? Am I foreshadowing well enough?)

I knew I'd get severely disrupted in November, and I was. Family and holiday stuff took up time, and I also worked on the forthcoming audiobook Cozy Shadows for Good Intentions. Apart from that, some of my writing days dragged a bit.

The bummer, though, was when I discovered I had copied the earlier version of this month's chapter into the manuscript TWICE, and in fact had done so months ago, which falsely inflated the word count I already had. As a little twist of the knife, I discovered this immediately after allowing myself an "I'm halfway through this story!" celebratory cupcake from the bakery around the corner.

So in the end, while I worked my ass off for most of this month... the words on the page now only amount to 78,600.

This. THIS is why I never give projected release dates until I've at least completed the rough draft. Any guess I offer will surely become a dirty lie. :)

With that grouchy news out of the way: PMF 7 and Cozy Shadows are moving along! I have worked out more of my plot, figured out how to restructure chapter two (which means the word count will fall again, eventually), and I can also proudly say that I fuckin rocked our Thanksgiving turkey, thankyouverymuch. Hopefully December will allow for more progress on this book. Nobody wants it finished more than I do.

Now, on to our next chapter! As I said, this book is a bit of a slow burn toward action, mainly to give Tanner's life outside of crises more room to breathe. When we last left Tanner, he'd just been informed that dormitory assignments were essentially frozen across campus for the next year and beyond—presumably to keep a lid on his floor full of chaos goblins.

ONE REVISION NOTE: After chewing on it, I wanted a somewhat more diverse cast among the chaos goblins. Analu is a character from previous stories, and he's on the rugby team just like Robbie, so he'll be stepping into Robbie's spot amid the nonsense. Please ret-con and revise your memories of the story so far accordingly. Thanks! :)