January was a decent month output wise. Since my previous update I’ve put down another two chapters, but a lot of the writing I’ve done hasn’t gone straight into the draft this time. Some of the chapters I’ve written I’ve rewritten a couple of times because I didn’t like what I had at first. Before I was a little uncomfortable restarting so much, but now I think it’s the right choice. If I try to go too far on uneven ground it slows me down more than making sure everything is just how I want it before I continue. I’ve also done a lot of writing parallel to the draft, writing about my characters, from their perspectives, ideas about where the plot should go. The story is coming along nicely I think.
I’ve also been working on my short stories. I plotted out the book of choices on the blog, and also started on a separate story yesterday which I plan on finishing off today. I’ll try to submit that one for publication after a couple rounds of editing. As for publishing stories from my backlog, those ran out faster than I anticipated. Many of them were just not very good on review, so I ended up putting them in my unpublishable pile. Now I’m working on new stories to submit, and waiting to hear back on my previous round. Hopefully I’ll hear some good news sometime soon. I believe early February was when I’m supposed to hear back for at least one of them. It’ll be exciting to see a bunch of return emails show up!
Thank you for reading,
Benjamin Hawley
Dangerous Day Job 