March was a bit strange for my writing. It was one of those months when I did nothing for 3 weeks and then went all in. There was also some progress that’s not well visible. So, let’s summarize the past month.

After finishing the feedback-based edits and some basic corrections around the end of previous month, I took a break from writing. That was based on an advice I once read: put some space between drafts so you come back to it with fresh(er) eyes.

However, that does not mean I was not writing at all. I’ve been actively pre-writing several blog posts I plan to release over time: a few more posts about specific clichés I post every 2-3 weeks, similar with the posts about self-inspiration. I also started working on what’ll follow later (and what I mentioned a month or two ago) – a series of posts about various aspects of character death in fiction (planned after clichés and self-inspiration are exhausted, so probably early May for the first post).

Then, I went back to it and started reading my current draft from the start, making notes. Apart from spotting mistakes (and getting better at that), I’ve been surprised by the fact I got several “small ideas” – changes in the size of a paragraph that’d help make some things clearer or drop hints.

There were a few more ideas touching the sequels – some more specific realizations for how some events tie one into another between the books-to-be.

Eventually, I’ve started making edits (which is the main point of an edit pass, right?) of several types: typo hunting, adverb hunting, grammar, thatectomy (that’s how someone called culling the unnecessary abuse of the word ‘that’), consistency (I finally managed to re-draw the timeline sketch as it was getting really messy since I drew it back in 2016) and a few more. I’ll need to do a large-scale revision of two chapters – one for creature consistency (it somehow avoided the previous pass in version 0.6.1) and one for two originally one-time characters getting a name because they’ll appear in the sequels as well.

Also, I promised the third sample when it’s through the edits, so I guess now is the time. The third sample is now up, a moment from midway through the story when one of the characters joins the heroes.

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So, that’s my March progress. See you next time!