February was rough. I had some lofty goals and ambitions going into the month, and I just kept getting hit with setbacks. Quite a few authors and writers I’ve spoke with have also experienced a less-than-ideal month. Should I take solace in the fact that I’m not struggling alone?
I wonder if it’s the winter blues?
Here’s what went wrong for me this month:
INTERNET: I continued having troubles with the internet connection. I’d finally had enough and called the service provider. They sent a technician out several times, and they have replaced all that can be replaced within our house and on our property. But the glitches and connectivity issues are still there, so the problem has been passed to a different department. We have been “put on a list” for the department to check the lines from the server origin to our house. However, they could not give us an estimate on the timeline because it all depended on how far down the list we were and how many people they had assigned to these kinds of problems each day.
The internet service I have now is worse than before I called them. It’s so frustrating
SELF-IMPOSED DEADLINES: When you set a deadline for yourself, it is essentially a promise to yourself. However, I have the bad habit of not keeping to my self-imposed deadlines. I can keep my promises to others, but not to myself. And having to constantly push back my self-imposed deadlines makes me feel like a failure, and then I feel even less motivated to write.
MATHEMATICAL ERRORS: I got very excited during the first part of February because I calculated and I thought I would be able to finish my full revision of the YA Fantasy by the end of the month. Two days later, I realized I hadn’t considered a few things. I had intended to write 5K words per day in the new draft, and then I finally realized it needed to cover 5k in the old draft AND allow a few days to write the missing chapters I need to include in this new draft. It just wasn’t possible at my typical writing speeds.
February was just a conjunction of things that made me feel unmotivated, and with the internet being so intermittent, uploading videos was not possible and livestreams have been very glitchy. However, I still attempted to keep to my livestream schedule, but attendance is down. Which is understandable considering the quality of the streams.
But I was determined to keep writing, no matter how little. So let’s take a look at how much I accomplished on my small YouTube channel and writing for the month of February 2021.
YouTube Analytics
For February 2021
Number of Videos: 15
Views: 1,365
Watch Hours: 585.6
Subscriber Growth: +8
10 Months of Writing Livestreams in 2020 (May-Feb.)
Number of Videos: 214
Views: 16,948
Watch Hours: 7,450.7
Subscriber Growth: +349
Subscriber total on February 28th: 380
Writing Analytics
February 2021
Pages Edited: 0
Words in YA Fantasy WIP: 36,362
Words in Romance WIP: 3,805
Words in Novellas/Short Stories: 0
Words in Web Content (blogs, video scripts, freelance, etc.): 1,068
Words in Research & Notes: 0
Words in Journal: 1,321
Monthly Word Count: 42,374
I finally was able to break 42K in a month again. This is the monthly goal for a half-Milwordy. If you are interested in the Milwordy Challenge, you can read my earlier blog post all about it.
In January, I predicted that my word counts would be mainly my YA Fantasy, Project Grey. I was right. I focused almost exclusively on this one work in progress. I finally finished re-outlining the entire book and I began the redrafting process. But it is taking much longer than I anticipated.
I do have a plan for March, to get more accomplished, but also to ensure I work in multiple projects. So feel free to check back in with the blog as I document that process.
With that being said, I still expect the lion’s share of the words for March to be in Project Grey, but I am also hoping to get a large chunk of progress for my romance WIP. As well as post at least two chapters of my Cinderella Should have Been a B*tch fairy tale retelling.
If you are interested in fairy tale retellings, I have been posting the chapters here on the website. Here’s the link. Or you can just check out the Cinderella Retelling Table of Contents link in the main menu at the top of this page.
Current WIPs:
(Not a whole lot has changed)
Project Grey (YA Fantasy) – 2nd Draft (finally!)
Project Grey 2 (YA Fantasy sequel) – Planning Stage
Project Moon (Paranormal Romance series) – Outlining
Cinderella Should Have Been a B*tch (Fairy Tale Retelling) – Drafting & Editing Stages
Murder Mystery – Backburner
If you are interested in joining me for some live writing or productivity sprints (although they are a bit glitchy at the moment), here is the link to my YouTube channel, where I hold sprints MWF 1-3 PM Eastern and Sunday 2-5 PM Eastern every week.
The Dawdling Writer 