Well…

Today was the best day I’ve had yet. It’s been a bit of a rainy day, which I tend to love. I prefer window-rattling storms, but the ground is so saturated that we’d probably have a flash flood if we had a storm like that.

The past couple days, I’ve been trying to write on The Fall of Skullkeep without making much headway. I’m not sure why. I love where the story is, and I know how the climax of the story will end. Right now, though, it seems like I just can’t get there.

One of the long-term professional writers I look up to says that we shouldn’t make public posts about our writing like this, and on one side, I kind of agree. But writing is also a major part of my life and easily one of my favorite activities. I’d rather write than just about anything else I’m interested in doing.

So, if I’m going to share info about myself, it seems almost a no-brainer that I’d share my successes and setbacks in something that is so valuable to me.

But enough of the tangent…

What made today my best day so far since April 23rd was that I wrote 4,875 words across three hours and one minute. I am super-happy about that. It feels very good to look at my writing log and see that data for today.

I want to see 23 straight days of that, at a minimum.

As I’ve stated before, my long-term goal is a minimum of 5,500 words per day, and I’d like to hit over 10,000 consistently. I don’t know if that’s sustainable–which is the key point to making this a long-term career–but if I don’t try, I’ll never know.

Why 5,500 words per day?

The simple reason is that I have a lot of stories I want to tell, and while I know I’ll never write all of my ideas, I have many that are especially important to me. I would love to build a stockpile of ready-to-publish stories, so that I can publish something every month–all year long–and have a buffer to cover getting sick or having some other complication rear its head.

Heh… it’s extremely unlikely I’ll ever get married at this point, but if I do, I’d like to take a honeymoon without worrying about not writing.

Having that stockpile would make so much of my life easier.

So… did you notice that I started off by saying Skullkeep hasn’t been working for me lately? And if I wrote 4,800 words today that didn’t go toward Skullkeep, just what did they go toward?

Why… I’m glad you asked!

Of that total, 1,378 words went into the first book of a series in that Fantasy shared world I mentioned. My current series are all finite series in my mind. Drakmoor will be ten books, no more. I toy with the idea of going back to write a trilogy that shows the Godswar, but honestly, I don’t feel excited enough about that idea for it to be anything other than something I toy with.

Likewise, the Primogenitor Saga will stop–or at least slow down to a considerable degree–somewhere between five and ten books. I didn’t start it with a set storyline, like I did with Drakmoor, but it’s a major question to me how many books I’ll be able to write before I ultimately lose interest or feel like I’m just being repetitive. If I’m not proud to put my name on it in public, I will not publish it. I learned that lesson with Fires.

So, what’s the deal with this shared world, then? Well, I wanted a place where I could go play without any stress or pressure to stick to an overarching storyline. I also want to explore certain aspects of Fantasy that I feel are underserved in what’s currently available. Right now, the shared world will have three series, and I love all three. They’re going to be so much fun.

But I don’t want to say too much about the shared world until I’m ready to publish the first series, so I’m going to go back to the day’s word count.

Minus the first 1,378 words, the rest all went to Chapter 1 of Tempus, which will be Primogenitor #4. And those words flowed like water. I had a blast writing them.

Exactly how it’s supposed to be.

This will very much be a turning point in Wyatt’s story. I want to say that his world won’t ever be the same, but while I’m not sure that’s 100% true, I do know that it will be a crux point.

So, that’s where I am. I’m sorry that I’m not making the progress on Skullkeep that I’d like. I wanted to finish that and get it out the door as quickly as possible. But while I’m by no means a perfectionist, the story has to be right. I feel the nineteen chapters I’ve written so far are right, but Chapter 20 is proving elusive. And unfortunately, I’ve never learned to write a story out of order. That is, I start writing at Chapter 1 and go through the story just like a reader would.

But anywho…

I also feel like today was a little bit of a milestone for me. It was the first day I’ve written so much in over a month, and the third day I’ve felt like writing since Mom died. If I’m being honest, there was a little voice in the back of my mind–a very tiny voice almost impossible to hear–whispering, “But what if I can’t write anymore?”

I want to say I’m glad that little voice is wrong, but I’m not going to say that. I defeated it today. Tomorrow is another battle.

But in the long run, I will win. I might not win every day, but I’ll win more than most from here on out.

It’s called moving forward.