*Screams excitedly *

I can’t believe a year ago I was still writing The Crush, and now I’m writing the final book in the trilogy (now renamed to The Ballad of Emery Brooks)! 😀

Y’all, this has been my most productive writing season to date. I pray it’ll continue on for as long as it can. So, let’s see how much progress I’ve made on The Dream in March!

As you may remember from my post back in February, My Third Year As a Published Author, I finished writing The Fall that day. I took the remainder of February to gather my thoughts and make a rough outline of what I’d like to happen in The Dream. Again, I used Abbie Emmon’s Turn Your Messy Story Idea into an Outline PDF printable to get started, and filled in the gaps with a play-by-play outline, writing brief descriptions of scenes I’ll need to write for the first five chapters.

March 2020

In 2019, I set monthly writing goals of 10,000 words for most months. I’m continuing this tradition in 2020, aiming to hopefully finish The Dream by the time The Crush releases in the fall, or by the end of the year, depending on how things go.

I started writing The Dream on March 4th, and made a mini-goal of writing 500 words for each writing session. Surprisingly enough, even though I was a bit terrified starting a new WIP that I hadn’t brainstormed as much as my past novels, the first three chapters of The Dream came to me pretty easily. I still feel like I need to go back and add some scenes in, especially one important scene I mistakenly neglected to add in Chapter Two. Oops. 😛

My March word count total ended up being: 10,755

April 2020

Truth be told… April’s writing journey has been rather sluggish. The beginning chapters of the story were easy to crank out, but once I reached Chapter Four, the murky middle ground swallowed me whole.

So far this month, I’ve been good to get 250 words in a day, feeling like everything I write is Haut Gar Bage. But, I’m not too worried about it. I may not make my 10k word count goal this month, but it’ll be fine. I’ve been editing The Crush again this month, so that’s where most of my focus has gone.

And, speaking of….

Goals for Publication

Here is my tentative publishing schedule for The Ballad of Emery Brooks trilogy!

• The Crush (The Ballad of Emery Brooks, #1): October 24th, 2020
• The Fall (The Ballad of Emery Brooks, #2): June 24th, 2021
• The Dream (The Ballad of Emery Brooks, #3): February 22, 2022

Like I said, this is tentative and subject to change. If the past year has taught me nothing else, it’s that Life Happens and Plans Change in the blink of an eye. Nevertheless, I hope y’all continue to follow this journey with me! ❤

Talk to Me, Arrowheads!

What are you currently writing? Share about your WIP in the comments!

Aim high, stay strong, and always hit your mark.

-Allyson 😀