Another progress post

It's nearing the end of SWANoWriMo, and so I wanted to check in to tell everyone I'm doing well with my goals. With three nights of writing left, I have 2000 words to go if I want to have written 50k in February. I would've reached that last night, except that I wasn't in a good head space, and so I gave myself the night off. One does that, sometimes. I read a lot of Feed so I can get my part 2 post up on the 29th, instead, and turned in relatively early, for me.

While I've written over 80,000 words in the current manuscript of the second book in my trilogy, I know I'm going to scrap at least 10,000 of them because they're repetitive or don't add anything to the narrative. I spent a lot of the early part of the book piddling around, finding my stride and sliding in characters who may be important later. Now that I see the shape the ending is taking, I can trim out what doesn't fit. Outliners have these issues, too, I understand, but in a third draft? Ah, well.

Reading-wise, I've pulled ahead a little in my progress on reading 100 books this year. I read a lot of books in February. I had the readalong, a Goodreads book club selection, and my ARC, in addition to all the books on audio I listened to while schlepping about for my job, and a library book I couldn't renew. I wouldn't have had an issue with reading as much as I did if I hadn't also been churning out about 1800 words a day on my novel.

I thought about a few informational subjects I could post about tonight, instead of a progress post. We talked about editing at yesterday's writing group meeting, so I have that post on a back burner. I'm also mulling over a series of posts about my favorite book series, and what makes them my favorites, because I can't complain on here all the time. I have upcoming posts about foreshadowing, letting the characters tell the story, and rewriting vs. editing.

But I didn't want to overshadow tomorrow's post, which is going to be awesome. You guys have no idea how often I've spared you the squee in the middle of my posts this month. I am so looking forward to it, and hoping you all find it as exciting as I do. It'll be up by 5 AM EST tomorrow.