Writing Update: February 2023

For the shortest month of the year, February sure seemed to last forever! However, I’m a little bit grateful for the cold weather and shorter days, because nothing is cozier to me than wearing a big sweatshirt, lighting a candle, pouring a hot cup of coffee, and sitting down to write.

And what a writing month it was!

I’m in the middle of redrafting my YA Fantasy novel. A few of my goals for this draft included:

— Reworking one of my POVs. This is a dual POV story and I decided to take a risk in this rewrite by leading with one of the story’s big twists (rather than waiting to reveal it until late in the story). I was worried at first that this decision might remove tension, but it’s actually added more nuance and conflict to explore. Feeling a lot of momentum because of it!

— Cutting my word count. Some feedback I got while querying last year was to get under the 100K mark (I had been at 107K). I’m right around 90K right now and I think I’ll end up around the 95K mark by the time I’m done with this draft. If you had told me a year ago that I could do this, I wouldn’t have believed you. But what they say is true: sometimes you have to delete scenes to make your story stronger. (I made a TikTok about this a few weeks ago and people kinda freaked out in the comments…. I always save these scenes in case I want to come back to them or repurpose them in some way!)

— Plotting my story beats thanks to the ever-helpful Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. Making spreadsheets with my key plot points to see (and adjust) my pacing was illuminating. My Type-A Enneagram 1 heart is filled with joy when I make those Google Sheets come to life <3

While this was a highlight-worthy writing month, February was my slowest reading month in a while. Can’t win ‘em all (and honestly, it’s a trade off I’m happy to make).