Hi folks! This is just a quick post to get you up to date on what I’ve been up to lately.

First and foremost, if you follow me over at Facebook, you probably have heard that A Man With A Gun is finished! The last words of the first draft were done during Sunday, February 8th’s writing session, although it was after midnight and technically Monday, the 9th by the time I finished. Begun as a short story back on July 12th of 2012 according to the title page in my manuscript, the story took on a life of its own. In the end, the short story became a novel of 87,500 words. By comparison, Frostwalker was around 81,000 when it was a first draft and the finished release version of Frostwalker is about 80,000 words after the cuts and additions made during revision and editing.

A Man With A Gun is a good illustration of the difficulties I had staying on task over the past couple of years. There are some good reasons for that and some not good ones, as I discussed in my New Years post last month. Despite taking two and a half years, according to my records there were only about 50 actual writing days involved in the creation of that book. Some of those days not spent on A Man With A Gun were spent on other projects. For example, The Card was begun in March of 2012 and, after editing and going through six revisions, it was released in January of the following year. But, far too many days were spent not writing at all. I won’t go over all of that again, as it’s covered pretty well in my post from earlier this year.

Speaking of that earlier post, how have I been doing with regards to my productivity? Well, up until finishing work on A Man With A Gun, I had gone every day this year without taking a single zero word count day. January 1st I only had 359 words and every day since then has been at least 1,000 word days. There have been several 2,000 word days, and the highest was 3,374 on February 5th. My goal is still to average 500 words per day, and up until I began my break on the 8th of this month my average was 1,656 per day. Total word count for the year is 64,589, passing the pitiful 48,000 words of last year on January 30th. Yes, I wrote more in the first month of this year than in all of 2014.

So what’s next? Facing burnout, I decided that when I finished A Man With A Gun, I would be taking two weeks off (possibly four). I don’t plan to do any writing during that time period. Instead, I plan to do other things that a writer needs to do. I still haven’t really finished the media kit for Frostwalker, so I need to do that. I also need to line up beta readers for A Man With A Gun. I’d like to get my mailing list sorted out and start making proper use of that, but I don’t have a lot to say that isn’t going to be posted here first, so I’m not sure if that’s a priority. Also, there is another project that I won’t be releasing myself but which I have worked on with someone else and that needs beta reads and revision as well. I’m also thinking about the next project(s). In fact, I woke up from a dream this morning that may end up being the inspiration for a new horror short!

Revision and editing on these two finished first drafts will take up a lot of time. Since those things can’t be measured in word count, I’m not sure how best to track productivity there. Just setting a goal for writing a certain number of words has turned out to be flawed. I want and need to get the next book out there to my readers, and now that the first draft is done, that needs to be a focus.

I do still think that shooting for an average of 500 words per day is a good target for the year. If I don’t write another word, my average output just from so far this year won’t drop below 500 per day until May 10th! At least, if my understanding of what my spreadsheet is telling me is correct. I should be eyeball-deep in the next project long before then! But, I still don’t know of a good way to measure productivity on those other tasks that don’t produce words. All I can do is try to make each day a day in which I did something to move things forward and hope for the best!

Next up: The long road to publication for A Man With A Gun. That means beta reads, revision, editing, revision, cover art, promotional materials, and all the rest! Stay tuned!

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A quick reminder: The Card is still free and will likely remain that way. If you haven’t picked up your copy yet, go grab it!