January Wrapped
and just like that its February
It’s finally February after what may be the second longest January of my life. I don’t know what it is about the first month of the year that seems to take up more than it’s allotted thirty-one days but I’m glad to be free of it. If that doesn’t set the tone for how the month went then I don’t know what does.
Anyway, to my goals and what I managed to accomplish. I had lofty goals for the new year and while I didn’t manage to achieve all of them, I did surprisingly well despite the unforeseen circumstances that cropped up.
Reading Goals
I’d planned to read at least one indie book and a physical/eBook every month of 2026 and I managed it even despite overloading myself with the rest of what I’d planned.
Rewrites
My biggest most time consuming plan was to write everyday of the month of January and complete rewrites of Bound in Blood and Darkness, my full length urban fantasy novel. I’d really lagged on edits after completing the first draft last year and wanted to jumpstart the year with finally finishing the much needed rewrites.
My well crafted plan went immediately off the rails when I discovered there was a section a bit before the ending that I needed to write before I could properly do the ending so I spent the first week writing that. It’s brilliant if I do say so myself, but that threw off my schedule by a week. By readjusting my timeline, I divided my rewrites into three sections to fit into the remaining three weeks.
I wrote 26,169 words in January!
I felt really good about it—hopeful even. But of course that’s when I had a health crisis midweek. I pushed through and managed to write on those days, even managed to complete the first third of the rewrite by a hair, but it was the beginning of the end of my momentum. The health issues persisted and now mental health and inclement weather joined them to create the perfect storm of issues that ultimately threw of my ambitious schedule.
While I did manage to write through it all, it became apparent in the final week that I was at least a week off from being able to finish my rewrites and needed to refresh my mind by exercising a different creative avenue before I burnt out. In retrospect, being a week off makes perfect sense considering I used my first week on a different section than planned, so I’ll give myself some grace on that.
Getting out of the house
Another goal I had was to get out my house and write! I’m a home body by nature and that has extended to my writing. So a goal of mine was to get out and write in the wild—or more like in a coffee shop or bookstore if which I did both! Yay me!
Somehow in all that, I signed up to do my first beta read for a paranormal romance author! It was such a fun experience! I did find myself doing at least half of the read on the vary last day due to using every available minute of the month to meet my writing goal.
Now to my goals for February!
Finish rewrites! - this should be no surprise. It must be completed for me to get to my real plans
Start draft three - when I’m finished with the rewrites I’ll have a clear view of where my wordcount is sitting and will be able to effectively do cuts! I have a pretty bloated draft and am starting a tad too early so I’m hoping to get the draft down to about 120k this first round of cuts!
Start draft four - I know what you’re thinking, how do you think you’re going to run through draft three so fast. I don’t but I’m nothing if not delusional. my stretch goal is to start on this by the end of the month. This new draft will be me channeling my inner Dr. Frankenstein and stitching together what remains after the cuts with the rewrites. I’d like to be done with this by the end of March but want to start as soon as possible.
Continue reading goals - I’ll continue my year long goal of reading indie and physical-eBooks (as apposed to the audiobooks that dominated my reading in 2025). Spoiler alert, I already read my first indie pub of the month which was also an eBook so two for one special. Though I do still plan to have a separate book for these goals.
Continue leaving the house - I will leave this house at least once this month to write I swear!
Okay, if you’ve made it this far then you’re a champ and I love you! I have some pretty cool things that happened last month that I’m going to share in a different post. Thank you for reading!