I'M HOME! | stream today & retreat realizations!

Hello, hello friends!

I feel like it's been such a long time even though, realistically, it's been two weeks (at most). But during this 100KQ4 challenge, that IS a long time! Not only has it been a while away from y'all, it's been a while away from my project, Under The Influence.

During the writing retreat, I chose to focus all my attention on A Closet Full of Cauldrons. (The right move, I think.) While I didn't complete the revision, I'm very, very close.

(Picture above from a walk Becca and I went on during the retreat! The town was decorating for the holidays already and this area near the little river was giving me such Gilmore Girls vibes.)

I rewrote the final two chapters from scratch and now I'm halfway through my "smoothing" re-read, where my goal is to make sure all the little and big changes made from last draft are making sense. Sometimes you change a single thing in one chapter and it has ramifications four chapters later.

Once I finish the "smooth," I'll go over the draft one final time, with a focus on line level stuff and making sure all the important names are filled in. :) SO CLOSE, I'm telling you!!

(Adorable chicken above crocheted by the incredible Lindsay Puckett.)

While on the retreat, I had an epiphany about how I needed to manage these two projects. I don't want to fully put the 100KQ4 aside as I finish, so my goal instead is a piece of throwback advice I once gave for juggling multiple projects: Do your most important work first.

So today, on the Twitch stream, I'll be working on ACFoC.

Then with y'all, on our 100KQ4 stream (at 1:45pm CST TODAY), I'll be working on Under The Influence.

I'll keep up this "routine" until I've sent off ACFoC to beta readers, with one caveat: Fridays.

As you can see, I've fallen behind. Not hopelessly behind, not yet! But I need to do something to mitigate this, especially with the upcoming holidays.

So I'm returning to another old favorite: The 5K Fridays. I'm going to go out on a 5,000 step walk and I'm going to write 5,000 words. (I think I have a video of this where my goal was 10K, but I'm being more realistic now, lolol.) I'm hoping this will give me short little bursts so I can get my line closer and closer to par. :)

Okay, that's it for me for now! I need to save all these extra words for my projects lolol. I hope to see y'all on the streams today. :) Until next time, happy writing!!