Summary:

A solid innings for my first official writing week of 2021. I faced some obstacles and didn’t get as much done as I’d planned, but I focused on the most important things and revised my expectations of some of the others. Happy overall!

 

Monday:

I did some more planning of marketing activities for The Defiant Spark (available for pre-order now!).

Then I settled down for my first proper writing session of my new writing year (even though it was only 28 December).

First on the list was diving back into Colours, to check for consistency, add depth and increase the word count a bit more. My plan was to do five scenes per session, so I read through my notes and then started at the beginning. I expanded the first five scenes, adding 444 words. It felt good to get back to it and remind myself that it was a promising story and worth working on.

Then I went back to the original short story of Safeguarding and reread it, adding to my notes for the novel as I went.

Later, I wrote a blog post about my writing plans for 2021.

 

Tuesday:

I spent the whole morning doing marketing activities for The Defiant Spark – contacting local media, people I support on Patreon who might be prepared to plug it, writing contacts who have communities they can advertise it to, school alumni associations, etc. It was pretty exhausting and felt a bit like shameless self-promotion – but I guess it’s all part of the deal of being a published author!

Later, I started editing the latest podcast episode.

 

Thursday:

I made a prioritised list for a full-on writing session today..

Sticking to my own rules, I started with Colours, expanding another five scenes. Then I went on to revising a few old pieces to fit upcoming submission opportunities, and submitted them. After that, it was back to Connection to complete the first draft before the end of the year.

I posted Connection to Scribophile for some feedback.

Later, I wrote my final two reviews of 2020.

 

Friday:

I started 2021 with my six-month review stats.

 

Saturday:

I did some submissions.

 

Sunday:

I meant to have a full day’s writing today, but got significantly derailed by other things.

Still, I managed to revise the next five scenes of Colours and do a couple of submissions.