I suppose I’m overdue for an update. This is the beginning of June and so far I’ve written about 36,000 words of a 60,000-80,000 word novel. This is well on target for the timeline I published back in March.

I went on vacation last week on the 28th and am sitting in the Charlotte airport awaiting my delayed flight back to Portland. During that time I wrote 4,951 words. This is an acceptable number, it keeps me on track, although I was going for 1,000 words a day, which would have boosted me beyond just an on schedule finish date to an early one. Oh well. At least I tried. Several storms in Kansas (I got my storms! Yay! I love storms.) and of course some unforseen things that took away from my planned writing time diminished the wordcount a bit. I may have also been a bit overzealous.

I’m actually surprised that I had the energy to write. It’s a lot easier to have some when I don’t have a day job to go to. Often I’m drained after work and it feels like a slog to start writing, although that feeling usually disappears about 15-30 minutes into a writing session.

Here’s the breakdown.  For April I wrote 16,564 words. I started a week late because of some plotting issues, including last-minute negotiations to try to nail down whether I could use the SW City universe or not (turned out I couldn’t, and despite that, I’m happy with the world I’ve been able to create and think it is still able to accomplish most of the feeling I wanted to create by using the SW City universe). Because of this, I had to make a last-minute push at the end of the month that pushed me over the monthly minimum goal I had set for March by several thousand words. Since I’m in an airport I can’t refer to what that goal was, but it was somewhere between 12,000 and 14,000 words, I believe.

May turned out pretty well, all things considered. 17,089 words written. Things went fairly according to schedule. That just leaves 2,460 words that I wrote on June 1 and 2. Ultimately I’m satisfied with my progress but am wishing I could go a bit faster. It’s hard to do that though. I also think for the next novel my weekly goal is going to be 3,000 words. As packed as my schedule is I’m finding I did not schedule in quite enough time for unforseen circumstances and well, just rest days, really.

This vacation has really been a blessing, as I’ve been able to recuperate and just relax. The writing has been really enjoyable for the most part, except for having to rewrite a scene because of a plot-hole I inadvertently introduced.

First I got to meet up with my brother Matthew and his wife and tour their new home. I then spent a couple days for Memorial Day at my grandmother’s lake house with relatives. I find I’m very lucky to have an extended family that doesn’t fight very often, and it was a real treat to see everyone again.

Last Monday we went home and I spent several days there. I even got to see a lightning storm, which Vancouver/Portland doesn’t get, and I’ve really missed the Kansas weather. I got to spend time with my parents, my brother Andrew, and got to see my two aunts on my dad’s side, whom I don’t get to see very often. We met at the Brookville restaurant in Abilene, spent some time in their freezer due to a tornado warning, and spent the rest of the evening (aforementioned writing time) dodging huge supercells full of death-inducing straightline winds and large hail while trying to drive home.

We even got to tour my friend Chuck’s house (he’s more Andrew’s friend than mine, but still a friend), which he purchased. It’s an old-style victorian home with monstrous square footage that he’s planning to rent out. A bit of a white elephant, really, but if he sticks with it he’ll actually make money. I can see why he bought it now.

The next day we found out my parents’ grain elevator business suffered some damage. I can’t upload photos now, but it damaged three grain bins of quarter-inch plate steel, crunching them like pop cans, and completely blew another bin made of thinner material off its foundation. This diminishes the capacity the elevator is able to take in for the wheat harvest in a few weeks, the largest money-making opportunity of the year. The river valley also flooded, which will further diminish the harvest yield for everyone who had wheat growing there. By no means a national disaster, but still a bad setback.

ConCarolinas was this weekend, and i got to see my friends Nathan, Andrew, Sarah, Joe, and meet a new friend, Josh. This year we actually spent more time enjoying each other’s company than going to panels and listening to other people speak. This is as it should be, IMHO. We even got to include Indiana Jim in on one of our conversations via the magic of Skype. He enjoyed it, and I think he was appreciative, since he wasn’t able to come this year due to family obligations.

Overall I think everyone really enjoyed the different feel of our get-together over previous years, this togetherness being the key element here. Some were even open to the idea of showing up on Thursday next year so that we can have an extra day to be together. In fact one person even suggested, independent of my input, that we ought to just get together at Nathan’s house someday instead of going to the con. I doubt that will ever happen, but I would welcome such a change. We could still geek out, but we could do it on our own schedule instead.

It’s not that I find cons boring. I just find my friends so much more interesting. They are why I traveled across an entire continent. Not the Sci-Fi Whose Line Is It Anyway? panel, although that was a blast too. Even got to shake hands with Harry Turtledove before that panel started.

Anyway, there is a storm incoming it looks like and I need to eat before the plane takes off since this plane is delayed and their cutting my layover in Houston short. So I will leave it here. Post questions in the comments section if you want to hear me reflect on something.

Until next time!