August was a quiet month for me in terms of writing seminars and activities, but that meant I had more time to get drafting done, and my word count for the month reflects that; it was higher than July’s. I’m also enthused because, for the first time in 2024, my average daily word count has gone above 500 words per day for the year to date. It didn’t happen until the 28th, and it’s only just barely which means I need to keep the momentum going, but it did happen and, as of this writing, is still the case.
That’s been carrying me through as I realize that I’m way behind on Standing in the Dark, to the point that right now I don’t expect I’m going to finish it by my self-imposed December 31st deadline. However, that’s not yet carved in stone. I have weekend writing retreats scheduled for both September and October, and while I’m not formally participating in NaNoWriMo, I’m doing it informally by setting a high word goal for that month.
I definitely won’t have it done by the end of the third calendar quarter, though. So, right now, I’m planning on adding an update sometime during the latter half of September. I’m holding off until then so that I can be as accurate as possible when I state how much has been completed.
I’m also a little disappointed in myself that I didn’t add anything to Tales from Winter Camp. I need to be do something with that, so I’m setting a revised goal of getting two more vignettes done in September. If I can pick that back up, I’ll keep increasing the goal until I’m back up to an average of one per week.
All this said, I did meet my goal with respect to maintaining the blog. The number of “evergreen” posts in the hopper hasn’t gone up much, but during August I’ve managed to keep posting twice a week. Right now it’s on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I’d eventually like to get to three times a week, but recognizing the need to prioritize Standing in the Dark means that I’m going to stick with twice a week as the September goal.
In addition to the writing retreat in mid-September, I’ve also signed up to take a course on English Sonnet Readings alongside Will. As I mentioned in one of my posts this past month, we’ve taken classes together before. The last time we took a humanities course together resulted in us discovering Babylon 5, which was A Very Good Thing. I’m hoping something equally good will happen with this class.
In summary, if I had to give a one-sentence evaluation of my writing during August 2024, I think I’d say something along the lines of, “you win some, you lose some.” Although I missed two out of my three goals for the month, I did have a number of other wins, and they were significant enough to keep the losses from discouraging me. The plan, then, is to keep up the good work and see what happens this next month.