Writing Update August 2022

Another Write In Faith Camp (WIF) has ended, just yesterday in fact, so it’s time for another writing update while the news is fresh.

Last month was the third month-long WIF Camp. My goal this time around was to reach 15,000 words across a few works-in-progress (WIPs). During the first couple of days, I did great and landed some normal-for-me word counts in the multiple thousands. Then things slowed to a slug-like crawl where I was chipping away and barely scraping by with the bare minimum of 100 words per project. Those middle couple of weeks were very frustrating for me, but I worked hard at pushing aside that feeling in order to pursue the words I knew I needed to log in.

However, the more I tried to work, the more encouraged I felt. I think this had a lot to do with the fact that other writers were also chasing down words or pages or whatever their goals were. That’s the neat thing about WIF Camp, that each individual writer, though working on their own stories, is not alone. We’re in the journey together for those weeks and days that fill up a camp session. It’s always so encouraging to me to see the progress other writers in camp are making. That pushes me on to keep chasing the dream of publishing another story.

So I kept logging in my bare minimums until one day a fresh idea sparked up. For a while now, I’ve been dreaming about writing a beach town series. The idea that waylaid me one day last month was a gem of an idea to kick off the series. So I switched my focus to outlining and brainstorming the plot for the first book to be set in my fictional town of Port of Joy, Texas. It took me a couple of weeks to get the chapter-by-chapter outline done, but that left a couple of days in which to start penning the first draft. Yesterday afternoon, I finished chapter one and at least half of chapter two. I’m quite excited about this project, and I’m hoping to get this first draft done by the end of October.

If that were to happen, I could set an editing goal instead of a writing one for the next WIF Camp.

Speaking of the next WIF Camp, it’s my pleasure to announce that it will take place in November. If you’re at all interested in participating in the next Write In Faith Camp, you may learn more information about it on this page of my website. Registration will be October 10-21, 2022, on that same page.

Returning to my writing update, by 10:30 last night, I had surpassed my goal of 15,000 words and reached 17,005 instead. It was touch and go for most of the month, but a slow and steady pace as well as lots of prayer pushed me right past my own expectations. I was particularly excited about yesterday’s session, because I cruised to a single-day count of over 2,600 words, which is more normal for me than those bare minimums. It was very encouraging to hit that number and to feel like I was in a good groove again, but even more so, it was encouraging to see that my prayers for good focus and a solid story plan were coming to fruition. It might be only a single day’s worth of words and a little bit of progress in my writing journey, but then again it may also be the start of a wonderful sort of writing rhythm.

As for the 100-for-100 challenge hosted by Go Teen Writers, I’m well on my way to being successful for the second year in a row. In fact, I’ve already passed the grand-total goal of 10,000 words as I’ve already made it to 37,489 words.

Even though the challenge is supposed to focus on a single project, my brain hardly ever works that way, so I’ve been working on several different projects. However, there has been one in particular that I kept chipping away at every day. When the fresh story demanded my attention, I switched my focus project to that one, and I’ve only had to claim two zeroes in the entire challenge so far, in those early July days when writing was a struggle. The challenge runs through September 13, so there’s still a month and a half of work yet to be done, but this new story is very promising.

The only problem is going to be that I have an editing job for August. Naturally, that isn’t much of a problem, as I love my work and am excited about this particular story I’m blessed to be a small part of. It simply means that my priority will be the edit and my secondary project will be the first draft of the debut Port of Joy book. I’m looking forward to the challenge, and I’m hopeful that the edit job will satisfy the portion of my mind that loves flitting from one task to the other. Perhaps after each day’s work is done, I’ll be able to focus really well on creating a delightful story of my own.

Something that might help is creating a playlist for this project. I could use some help on that, actually. What type of songs put you in the mood for a beach read? I’m thinking The Beach Boys will definitely make the cut, but I would love to hear which songs put you in mind of hot summer days spent on sandy beaches or warm summer evenings sitting out on the porch with a tall glass of sweet tea.

What are your favorite things about beach town series?
How long of a series do you prefer? (number of books)
What projects do you have planned to work on in August?

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