A Late Farewell To August

Yeah, my brain isn't functioning too well right now. Last weekend, I slept 15 hours on Friday night, was up for and hour and a half, and had to go back to bed for a nap. This weekend, I'm even more tired - only it's been insanely busy, being Father's Day and all, and I haven't had the chance to sleep quite so much. So brain is enduring much fuzziness.

All this by way of apologising for the lack of posting last week.

Anyway, August. It's gone! Over! Wow. Is it just me, or is time speeding up? o.O

Not sure I had any specific goals for August; I knew that three weeks of it would be consumed by prac, and I predicted (quite correctly) that I wouldn't be able to do much writing during prac this time. However, goals and wish-I-dids aside, this is what I've actually done this month :)

Total word count was 11, 255, which I must say is pretty good. August last year I only wrote 7,569. Although I've only been keeping stats for nearly three years, it's really interesting: I seem to have a pretty consistent writing pattern. Namely, writing nothing in January, have a peak in Feb, then go back to nothing in March, write really well from April through to July, have a dip from August through to October, spike in November for nano, and collapse again in December.

I wonder what it is about first semester that means I can happily write through exams and assessment and all such business, when I apparently can't do the same in second semester? (First semester in Australia being Feb-Jun, and second semester Jul-Nov) Tis all very puzzling, and it will be interesting to see if the pattern continues next year, when I have a full time job. It could go either way: on the one hand, I'll have a full time job. On the other hand, I'll be teaching, so my life will still conform to the same semester pattern. We shall see...

Anyway! Enough about me and my random patterns O:) :D What did I actually write?

* About 1200 words on The Dragon Stone, a story that's been hovering in my head for about a year; it finally connected that the beginning of a short story that I had lying around was actually the beginning of this novel o.O

* About 2300 words on the Jesscapades edit/rewrite. Yay! Feedback from alpha readers has been very positive, so this is great :D

* About 6,600 words on the Jesscapades synopsis/outline. I feel like it's totally cheating to include this in my word count for the month, but I made the executive decision that I'd feel happier having a better word count and cheating a little than I would if I didn't cheat and had a miserable word count :D

* Miscellaneous work (nothing over 1k) on: Sanctuary (the MG fantasy from nano last year); Secret Breaker (a gothic-crime-urban-fantasy novel, first in a series); Borderlands (my next wip; post-apocalyptic dystopic fantasy); Love's Shadow (a literary-style fantasy short); and my Travelogue.

Totally random.

But hey, I Wrote Words. Words is good, right?

For September, I'm shooting for 10k again, and I'm debating whether or not to include the 2k of words I wrote this morning typing up an awesome dream that I had that's to be the basis for another novel - and, oh-my-goodness-I-can't-believe-I'm-admiting-to-this, it has zombies. Argh.

Prac finishes Sept 18, and then I have two weeks of 'holidays' (ha; hear me laugh hollowly, as I survey the 9 assignments that are due in the following four weeks...) - so I should be able to hit 10k.

I'm planning for most of that to be on Jess, but I know random things will sneak in there too. I want to get a synopsis for Borderlands done, I think I owe church a play, and I'd really like to get some more shorts finished so I have something new to sub.

And that, dear readery-ones, was August!

Tell me - how did you go?