I really don’t want to write this one, because I’ve done so little. But when you realise how much I had to work around it’s surprising I got anything done!

I finished reading all of the Deep Editing lecture packet from Margie Lawson (though I’ve not applied it to ALL of Nothing Charming yet, only what I’ve edited so far). Speaking of Nothing Charming, I’ve edited a further 22 pages using both the Deep Editing class, the four beta readers’ feedback and my own nous. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but I only had access to a computer for ten days this month, and most of those I was working the day job, packing, cleaning, and critiquing other peoples’ work for the Vision Writers meeting this weekend.

To break down how I went with my goals directly:

  • Proceed with edits on Nothing Charming: I did 22 more pages. Progress FTW
  • Percolate some flash fiction ideas while driving on the holiday: I had two ideas while away, but I don’t know if they’ll end up being flash, they might be more my usual short story length ;p an idea’s and idea though, length doesn’t invalidate that in my opinion.

I might have managed to edit a few more pages of Nothing Charming, but I recieved a nice rejection back for Mermaid In A Jar so edited that story both with the feedback from the rejection and with the Deep Editing course. I’ll do one more read through later today and submit it to the next publisher.

bonus points for the skink in the bottom left hand corner

The massive time suck was the road trip to Sydney. While it was no good for my writing and editing it was super fun in general. I also got to see a lot of baby (or at least immature) birds that I’d never seen before. I saw baby peacocks with their peahen mother, and an immature bush turkey (it was so small and scratching up his little mound already uber-cute!). There were kangaroos at every campsite, some sidling right up to our tent. We also met some super friendly possums and land-on-your-arm lorikeets – and those are the wild animals! We also went to Taronga Zoo and the Sea Life Aquarium (dugongs!).

As much as I goaled low for February, I need to make up for the lost time. Here are my March goals:

  • Complete edits on Nothing Charming (and maybe convince friends and family to chip in for a professional edit for my birthday ;p )
  • Prepare the plot outline for ‘The Handrell War’
  • Write two new short stories
  • Get all my back catalogue stories back out there. At the end of last year I fell seriously behind and I hate sending out stories that haven’t been self-edited between each rejection – you never know what I learned while they were out and what I’ll catch on a fresh read
  • Read through the current Written by the Stars draft, lift plot points, rework with Story Equation to create new plot outline for use in Camp NaNo in April

Yes I *know* I keep saying ‘no more NaNoWriMo’, but its a checkbox on the Five Year Best Seller course, and I don’t want to skip any steps.

And lastly, a stretch goal of:

  • Edit Lovely/Lonely

The list’s a bit long, but I’m confident I can handle it, especially with Harley at kindy an extra day a week to meet the minimum attendance requirements.

Lastly, for those who want to know, here’s the books I read in February: