Hello, friends!

I thought I’d let you know how my personal writing progress has been going this summer. So far, I’ve had about two months off of school and have been using that time to the best of my abilities. So what have I gotten up to?

For starters, during the month of May, I made it one of my goals to finish a short story that I’ve been working on. I started the story as the final project for my short story class during my fall semester in 2016. When asked to describe it, I usually say it’s about dragons and feminism, which I think sums up the subject matter and themes nicely. By the end of May, I finished my second draft. I renamed the story, considering the first draft title was an afterthought I added right before I turned it in. The story, formerly called True Drakon, is now titled Frostfire. I’m really happy with the name because I think it reflects many of the symbols and themes in the story, but it’s entirely possible that I’ll change it again. Draft two is 25 pages and approximately 7000 words.

After finishing the story, my next goal was to beta it. I asked several people if they would be interested and plenty of them volunteered. I’ve almost received all of my critiques back and I love seeing what people have to say. When I’m unsure about a comment, I wait to see what other people think about that part of the story. When comments are repeated by multiple betas, I know to pay attention to the sections they’re mentioning. Once I have feedback from all my betas, it’s time to work on draft 3 and do it all over again. My hope is to publish it on Kindle before the summer is over so I have something published to add to my resume. I’ll post more on that when it starts happening.

In addition to Frostfire, I’ve been working on the novel I started last summer, Gemini. I’ve made a couple of posts and videos that mention it so I’ll link those right here:

(Posts: Personal Writing Update and Magicians, Dragons, and Challenges.)

(Videos: Mini Victory: Halfway Through My Wordcount and The Naughty List: Writing Tag.)

So the story is a sort of urban fantasy about a Magician culture and two Magician girls who live within it. One of the vague goals I set for myself was to finish it this summer. One of the specific goals I set for myself was to finish it during the month of June. The June goal is definitely not happening. At present, I’m still in the second act of the story and I haven’t even reached the midpoint. However, I’m hoping to give myself a modified victory at the tail end of this month by, not finishing the book, but at least reaching my projected wordcount. If you’ve ever done NaNoWriMo, you know the standard wordcount goal is 50,000 words. I always try to make my wordcount goals the same. Last summer, I got halfway through and hit 25,000 within the first act. By the end of June, I’m hoping to reach 50,000 words, which should put me around the midpoint. Then, I can still work to achieve the completed first draft by the end of the summer.

As there are only 3 days left in June, it’s going to be a bit of stretch to achieve 10,000 words and I’ll learn to forgive myself if I don’t make it in time. Either way, it’s lots of fun to have a goal to work towards and force me to write. I think this completes my personal writing update for now, but I will keep you in the loop as to how everything pans out.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!