Hi! I hope y’all are doing well. It’s hard to believe we are almost at the end of February.
This past week went fairly well, all things considered. I made a good bit of progress on book stuff, and I got some reading done. I also did a bit of assorted research/studying on things like figure drawing and different worldbuilding elements for my series. With regard to FAWM, I haven’t made much progress, though I did try to refine a few of the ideas I have for songs.
Writing
Book 11 is coming along nicely. I’m kind of coming at the next part from two sides. I’m slowly drafting from where I currently am, and I’m trying to work backward from where I know things will end up. As it is, I do have a bit more to figure out, but that amount is getting smaller with each passing day. I currently have a rough plan to finish drafting Book 11 in the next week or so. If my estimate for the remaining words is accurate (a big if), it should be more than doable. We will have to see how things go, though. I am definitely pleased with the progress.
Reading
Reading for this week has mostly been making my way through Terry Pratchett’s The Color of Magic. So far, I am enjoying it. I definitely enjoyed meeting Death in this book, though I did find it interesting that the character seems to have gained a bit of dimension/depth between this book and Reaper Man. It’s spiffy when you can see that development.
Art
Most of my work on the art side of things has been studying figure drawing. To a decent extent, that has involved looking for assorted resources that will help me understand a bit more about the process. Since one of the big reasons I want to learn how to draw is so that I can draw my characters, I want to be able to draw a bit more intentionally. I’ve gotten some spiffy pieces by winging it, but it seems a little different when I am trying to make specific pieces.
February Album Writing Month (FAWM)
Admittedly, this third week of FAWM kind of got put on the back burner given some unexpected stuff that came up this week. I have done some thinking about the songs I’d like to write, but I haven’t actually had much of an opportunity to sit down and write them.
To be fair, the fact that I am writing these songs as in-world songs for my series does make this process a little trickier. Last FAWM, I had some rather clear topics that I wanted to address, namely some of the big themes in my series and some of the defining traits of the different races in that world. This year, I wanted to do something that would lead me to dig a little deeper into the society and world of my series. There are definitely a few challenges that are cropping up in that attempt.
At this point, I’m not sure I will make the “14 songs in 28 days,” particularly because I have 2 songs at the moment, and there are only 8 days left, but we’ll see how things go.
Next Week…
Now then, plans for this week… With a good bit of luck, I will be able to finish the first draft of Book 11 and write another twelve songs for FAWM. Short of that, I would at least like to make progress on both of those tasks. I’d also like to finish reading The Color of Magic. I have a few other books lined up that I might start (or continue) next, including Diane Duane’s The Empty Chair. Other than that, I’d like to do a bit more research on figure drawing, and if I have time, I’d like to start working on some sketches.
Also, Camp NaNoWriMo is coming up in April. Feel free to add me as a writing buddy on the NaNoWriMo website. My name on the site is fantasy_writer42, and you can find my profile here.
I think that’s everything for this update! Thanks for reading!
~ Theresa
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