This month’s report is a little bit earlier as April will be full of A to Z challenge posts (I’ll be talking about the setting of my fantasy world – come back to check them out). If February was an earthquake when it comes to my plans, March could be called aftershocks. Even though work-wise it was a quieter month, I was in a constant catch-up mode, trying to meet my self-imposed deadlines.

Writing

I didn’t spend as much time writing as I had hoped for. Because of February’s workload, I didn’t get to prepare posts for the third Melfka’s Birthday Week, and even though until the last minute I was hoping to make it happen, I had to postpone it until the next year.

February was also the reason, I got wrapped up in rebuilding my website, preparing my short story collection, and figuring out the intricacies of creating a newsletter. I learned a lot about ebook formatting and newsletter management, and managed to launch it all mid-month.

Then, I hit a roadblock with my rewrite of By the Pact. There is a specific chapter that needed to be heavily reworked, but as it is with all things that have moving parts, changes would affect other chapters and scenes. It wasn’t something I could do quickly and move on, so it slowed down my progress.

And, in the end, I took it easy, because with such an intense first half of the month, I needed to recharge. This partial “time off” also helped me to figure out that nasty chapter, and even though there are still things to iron out, I could move forward.
But looking at the numbers, I did quite well, hitting over 16,000 words this month.

Art

I’ve been working on the cover for Scourges, Spells, and Serenades for several months. It was one of those projects I kept mentioning in the previous posts, but couldn’t share until it was finished. Again, I learned so much working on it, it was definitely worth the time.

And then, of course, I drew more dragonflies. It’s really uplifting to see people enjoy them so much, and I hope I’ll manage to keep going.

Writer’s life

I didn’t celebrate my birthday in any special way, but I got a wonderful gift from Inq: two Stitch figurines that now proudly “clutter” my desk. And since he got us a fun video game, a sci-fi shooter, I’ve been enjoying it during my downtimes.

I also took the leap and finally dyed my hair purple. Of course, without extensive bleaching the color didn’t show much on my hair (and by now it’s all washed out), but I always wanted to try how I’d look in purple hair. Getting old seemed like a good excuse to do it.

Reading-wise it wasn’t an impressive month, but I did read one non-fiction book. I’m trying to alternate between fiction and non-fiction, but the former are more likely to get me into a reading binge that I can’t afford at the moment when it comes to time.

My last year’s pansies seem to have survived winter, but I wasn’t sure if they would bloom again, so I decided to sow another batch… You know, just in case. Since I’m not exactly following the instructions of keeping the seeds indoors for the first weeks, I can only hope they’ll actually grow: March’s weather is a bit moody, though it generally stays above 30F/0C.

In the meantime, I noticed a single bud in the last year’s pot. It has since fully bloomed, but what’s interesting, no more showed up so far, so it must have been the impatient one. I keep my fingers crossed more will show soon.

And how about you? How was your March?