Oops, It's May!

So, it occurred to me last night, as I was lamenting my lack of brain power and thus inability to put up a post for Wednesday, even if a day late, that it’s MAY! And it has been for a whole week! And I haven’t done an April recap!

*proceeds to wiggle with glee at the prospect of a legitimate but non-thinky blog post*

I’d better explain the brain-fry, hadn’t I?

This week has been my first week on prac. You may or may not be aware, but this is the year I’m doing my Graduate Diploma of Education; I’m training to be a teacher. What I (mostly) fondly call my Dip Ed is a crash course in how to teach, the four year bachelor’s degree crammed into a single diplomary year. It’s hectic. It’s insane. And this week, I started my first block of prac teaching. It’s been an absolute blast, but it’s also been an emotional rollercoaster, and I get home each night thoroughly worn out. So I apologise for the lack of coherent blogging this week; next week will be better J

So. April. Oh-month-most-fair.

This year, in fact, it was a fair month. If you recall, back in March I wrote less than 4,300 words. Ack. In April, however, I managed the shiny sum of 16,765 words. Hoorah!

Here’s how things broke down:

• · Total words: 16,765
• · Words on Jesscapades: 13,662, for a total of 46,095. Squee! I broke the halfway mark and am only fractionally shy of 2/3rds J
• · Added 1915 words to Death and Foxes, completing the short.
• · Started Festival of Souls, a new short: 760 words.
• · Edited Death and Foxes and The Dress
• · Made 5 submissions

All in all, pretty shiny! I am most squiggle-ly happy with the month, and can only hope to somewhat emulate it now in May. All the submissions (and the few made since) mean that every short story I have in reputable shape is now out (oo, oo, I got my second acceptance on Wednesday!), and I managed such a happy word count after a month of slumpiness by employing a cunning bit of self-trickery: I only aimed for 13,000 words. That was 500 words per day, six days per week, and that, I decided, I could do. and because I could do it so easily, and because often 500 words wasn’t long enough to get through a bit of writing I was particularly keen on, I ended up with significantly more than the target. Hoorah!

This month, I plan to employ the same trick, but suspect that due to prac I’m more likely to end up around the 10k mark this month. As long as most of those are on the novel, that will be fine – I’m going away for five weeks over July, and I really really want the novel done by then, since the 5 weeks will be the perfect break between drafting and editing :o) Here’s hoping!