I had one goal for this week: to finish the short story I’m writing about Cate’s brother, Thomas.

It’s not done.

But the week’s not over yet, and I have excellent excuses. 😉

Writer-y things I accomplished this week:

✅ 1670 words added to the aforementioned story.

✅ Scheduled interviews with Jillian Dodd and Theodora Taylor for upcoming Indie Author Magazine features (I’m so excited, y’all! Let me know if you have any questions for them!)

✅ Met with the amazing editor who poked hundreds on holes in my magic system to talk through how we plug them up. (The answer is: we don’t. We take it all apart and build it better.)

✅ Dug through all my notes, past outlines, charts, and lists to find the reverse outline I started after the previous draft and promptly ignored.

✅ Used said reverse outline to replot the book, charting where existing chapters will fit in as is, where they will need to be heavily revised, and where they will need to be completely rewritten. (It’s a lot, y’all. It’s practically a new draft. And I’m only halfway through the outline. But it’s going to be so much better than the last four “final drafts”!)

✅ Decided to add some artifacts between chapters to give the reader information that isn’t available to the limited first person narrator. (Think John Winchester’s journal, pages out of the Halliwells’ Book of Shadows, maps, personal letters, newspaper clippings, tarot guidebooks, administrative forms, and arrest reports. Kind of the voice of Cackle meets the format of Alias Grace)

✅ Got really excited about the project of making all of those extras.

✅ Had a little bit of a panic about getting any of it done.

✅ Set some hard deadlines to make sure it happens.

Meanwhile, I still plan to finish drafting this story by Monday, so here we go!