In March, the world went into a chaos, yet I managed to get some writing done – though the situation meant I had little track of it.

February had me facing a change in my life due to starting a full-time job. Little I knew that my life will change again, even though the impact was not as big as it might seem.

At the end of February, I got back to editing #1, and that’s what I continued doing through most of march. Eventually, the feedback from one of my betas was processed and acted on, by which time I focused on my other active swap – and more on reading than the feedback; I had a look, reacted to some questions or clarified things, then let it rest.

When the COVID madness reached my country, the government acted quickly with one emergency measure after another – yet I became unaffected in a larger scope: I still go to work (though wearing a face cover) and thus my daily schedule is mostly the same. Which meant no surprise extra writing time, as would be the case if I worked in any of the affected businesses.

Eventually, after I received the fourth part of my last on-going beta swaps, I’ve started working on it. Most of the changes I made so far are minor – fixing typos and small issues while noting down the larger ones to tackle during April. Still, the time flew by during this process and I hope that I’ll get some ideas on how to approach some of the necessary changes.

What troubles me the most, writing-wise, is that this stage will be mostly about polishing, and this means dealing with some mechanical issues that I know I might struggle with – fixing some dialogues where the structure suffers or repetitive elements in scene openings.

It’s also hard for me to guess what my actual progress might be in April. I know I should start tackling book cover soon (which means I need to finalize the ideas to know what exactly I’ll request and on what budget) and same the map (which I’ll try to do on my own). I’ll probably try to get back to pleasure reading (I haven’t read anything but beta swaps pretty much since the second week of January) as a way to take a break between the first and the second editing stage.

Apart from that, I guess I’ll just try to stay healthy and as unaffected by the current outbreak as possible.

So, that’s the monthly update. I hope you’re all doing well and that it’ll stay so.

See you next time.