Summary:

 

Lots of stuff whirring around in my head at the moment, which makes me feel a bit scatty, but it’s exciting (if a bit daunting) to have two big projects I love on the go.

 

Monday:

 

Last morning at the Devon writing retreat and I completed one more scene of the new novel to get me up over 10,000 words written over the course of the four-day weekend. Woohoo!

 

Wednesday:

 

Another day where I nearly cancelled my writing date with Hannah but was glad I didn’t because I got quite a bit more of the new novel done, as well as a blog post about motivation and productivity.

 

I also started a short story for the romance anthology I came up with the idea for last week.

 

On the train on the way home, I received the developmental edit on the first novel (Artisan) from my editor, Amie, and was instantly horrified by the amount of work it implied I still had to do. But I took her advice and tried not to over-react. Instead, I read it through once, took a deep breath, and decided to come back to look at it in a calmer fashion later in the week.

 

Saturday:

 

A whole day all to myself in Good and Proper. I made a list of things to work on, but felt quite relaxed about it because I knew I had several more writing sessions scheduled in the near future.

 

I started, as usual, by catching up on my reviews.

 

I made some amendments to the new novel (Colours), adding in some location detail to anchor the main plotline in the UK.

 

Then I reread the developmental edit of Artisan and made detailed notes – stuff I agreed should change, questions I had about some of the feedback, and queries regarding other feedback I’ve received that wasn’t raised here. Then I sent Amie a lengthy email with all my questions. It still seems like there’s a lot of work to do (and most of it I have no idea how to approach), but it felt like something I’d like to work on, rather than a horrible misery burden.

 

Artisan revisions are my main project for the start of 2018, though. So, I finished off my session by writing the next scene of Colours. I’m going to have to do a lot of careful planning if I want to keep both novels on the go in the first part of next year. I hope it will be possible, but we shall see.

 

Sunday:

 

Geena and I brainstormed Colours for a bit, always a good idea because she comes up with really interesting directions for the story to go and just gifts them to me. It’s a great partnership because she’s really good at inspiration but very happy for me to do all the work, and I need the ideas infusion but want to maintain ultimate control of the writing.