Brooke Johnson's Blog

Another slow month for me in May. Though I was able to return to rewrites on my novel, I still struggled with being sick for most of the month, until a round of mega antibiotics cleared up my sinus infection (or whatever was actually going on). I spent most of my time completing the minor revisions I talked about last month, shoring up my weaker scenes and fine-tuning the characterization early in the book. In the end, I really only needed to make minor revisions to one scene, rewrite another scene, and add one new scene to the first act. So not too bad. Though I wanted to finish Act 2a by the end of the month, I still have one chapter to go. Being sick really messed up my productivity.

Otherwise, I spent a lot of time brainstorming on my epic fantasy I’m wanting to write. I worked several hours on developing a new version of my conlang that I’m happier with, and I now have a notebook by the couch to write down ideas when I’m watching TV. The ideas are really starting to flow, but it’s all still brainstorming at this stage. I’m not going to bother with trying to outline anything until my WIP is done, and even then, I’m going to try to write my murder mystery first. I want to take a stab at a more episodic series before taking on an epic.

Also, I got a new wireless ergonomic keyboard that I really like (Microsoft Sculpt). It’s a lot smaller than my old one, so I don’t have to reach so far for my mouse while I’m working (which I do a lot more than I would have thought), and it’s better suited for gaming for that reason too.

Word Counts:

Blog/Newsletter: 808
BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL: 6,396

Total Words Written Last Month: 7,187
Total Words Written in 2022: 72,633

Plans for This Month:

I only have three scenes to complete before Act 2a is finished, which I’m hoping to get done by the end of next week, if possible. Then I’ll review the whole thing, see if any changes are needed, and then move on to Act 2b. I’ve made it my goal to complete at least one chapter a week, so hopefully by the end of this month, I’ll have completed the rewrite through Chapter 14, which is about halfway through Act 2b. Being summer break now, my life schedule is a little more demanding with kiddo’s camps and other activities, but I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to make good progress anyway.

It’s been… a month.

I was sick for three weeks of April with allergies turned sinus infection with a dash of migraines and weather-induced joint pain, so I didn’t really get much done in those three weeks (or this first week of May for that matter). However, I did work pretty diligently in the first half of the month, so it’s not all bad. I managed to finish up edits up through Chapter 10 on my rewrite, which then became Chapter 9 once I condensed another two chapters into one earlier in the book. I started working on my next section of chapters, summarizing each scene so the writing part would be less difficult. Of course, that’s about the time when I got really sick, and my productivity tanked. Still, not all bad.

Word Counts:

Blog/Newsletter: 1,128
BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL: 18,487

Total Words Written Last Month: 19,615
Total Words Written in 2022: 65,446

Plans for This Month:

I’m finally starting to feel better, and after a bit of illness-induced frustration and malaise that made me want to quit writing altogether, I’m feeling better about going back to work on rewrites next week. However, moving forward, I’m going to revise my rewrite plan.

I figured out how to fix my weaker scenes and characterization in one of the early chapters of the book, so I think that’s going to be my first order of business this month. It’s just a matter of rewriting one scene (using some existing material from later in the book) and expanding another scene to include some of the original elements from the first draft that should help flesh out a minor subplot that becomes more important later in the book.

I also decided to rearrange my draft back into four parts at the natural act breaks and midpoint, instead of just lumps of five chapters. I think it will help me focus on the storytelling within each act as a whole, so that each act is cohesive in itself. At the moment, I have Act I: Chapters 1-6; Act IIa: Chapters 7-11; Act IIb: Chapters 12-17; Act III: Chapters 18-23, plus an epilogue. With the edits I plan on making to the current Chapter 3, that may expand into an extra chapter in the first act, but it really depends how much I actually need to add in there. (It’s already pushing toward 6,000 words, and I’m trying to keep my chapters less than 6,500 if at all possible.)

Once I’ve fixed those early scenes though, I’ll get back to work on the current Chapter 10, the next to last chapter in Act IIa. I’m hopeful that I can be pretty productive for the rest of the month (assuming I don’t get sick again), and I can wrap up Act IIa before June rolls around.

I’m definitely behind where I would like to be progress-wise, but such is life.

Writing:

March was a very productive month for me! If you remember last month, at the end of February, I decided to buckle down on my book by pulling back on social media and my non-writing streams, and it has certainly started to pay off! I had some up weeks and some down weeks, but overall, I made excellent progress on BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL.

I’m a little behind where I would like to be at the moment—I had hoped to start rewrites on Part 3 this week—but this is the kind of thing that takes the time it takes. Chapter 9 has given me a lot of trouble this month despite thinking that it would be fairly straightforward. Rewrites were difficult to begin with (that’s what happens when you try to condense scenes from multiple chapters into a single scene), and then when I went back to review Part 2 as a whole, I realized I needed to rewrite it yet again, so that’s been slow going.

Otherwise, I’m really pleased with my progress. I wrote more in March than I did in January and February combined, and my total word count is inching closer and closer to my target goal. As of right now, I’ve cut 86,000 words total from the book, turning the first 18 chapters and a double prologue into to just 10 chapters and no prologue. It’s a little nebulous as there are things from the first half of the first draft that I still need to add back in to later chapters, but it’s a good indicator of the progress I’m making overall.

Word Counts:

Blog/Newsletter: 1,006
BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL: 21,991

Total Words Written Last Month: 22,997
Total Words Written in 2022: 45,831

Plans for This Month:

My first goal is to complete my review of Part 2, of which I only have a little left—about 8,000 words to read over, rewrite as needed, and polish. I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to finish that up over the weekend so that I can start on Part 3 next week. Then it’s just a matter of rewriting those four chapters, which, if I’m both good and lucky, I should be able to finish by the end of April. I’m really looking forward to moving on to this next part. Part 1 was mostly setting up the main characters and conflicts, and the inciting incident(s). Part 2 was more worldbuilding, more characterization, introducing new characters, and starting to build up to the main conflict, a bit of a lull before the storm, so to speak. Part 3 is when the story really starts rolling and just… doesn’t stop until the end. I’m really excited for that.

I’m really pleased with how February went. Last week was, by far, my best week, but I made really steady progress on BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL, and managed to finish one of my most difficult chapters to edit so far (which was my primary goal for the month, so, woohoo!). I’m about halfway through Part 2 now. I also rewrote my query and synopsis for the book, which, I think, helped me streamline my plot better, and I’m feeling much more confident about the story overall. Also, inspiration struck on a couple of other projects that are still in the brainstorming stages, so I wrote on those a bit, mostly just worldbuilding notes at this point. One is my epic fantasy I’ve been adding to forever, and the other is a new mystery project, as yet untitled. I also discovered Canva, so I made a few mood boards for BOSTOP as well.

Word Counts:

Blog/Newsletter: 644
BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL: 12,580
Epic Fantasy: 176
Mystery: 582

Total Words Written Last Month: 13,982
Total Words Written in 2022: 22,834

Plans for This Month:

I’m hopeful that I will be able to wrap up Chapter 8 fairly soon (hopefully today if I can manage it!). I have set myself a deadline for the end of July to finish these rewrites, which means I need to complete at least two scenes each week. Once I finish Chapter 8, I only have two chapters remaining in this section. I think Chapter 9 should be pretty straightforward as it features two villain scenes (somehow, I nailed those characters in the first draft and haven’t had to make very many changes to their POV scenes). Chapter 10 is only one scene, but it’s a doozy of a chapter with a lot of drama going on and a major turning point in the book. I wouldn’t be surprised if that one takes me a whole week to rewrite on its own. Even so, I should have enough time left in the month to review the book up to this point to make sure everything is still cohesive and the pacing is right before moving on to Part 3 next month.

Also, I’m taking a social media hiatus until I finish the book.

(Belated update, as it seems I forgot to post this last month!)

January was a bit of a roller-coaster, with several good writing days and a lot of bad ones. I also caught COVID, which wasn’t horrible. I actually wrote the most on my WIP the week I was sick. Go figure. I wrapped up rewrites on Chapter 6 in BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL and then ground to a screeching halt on Chapter 7 when I realized that I didn’t actually need the scenes I originally planned to put there. I still haven’t quite figured out what to do with that chapter, but hopefully, I will have a burst of inspiration soon. I did spend some time working out a two-page synopsis to try to examine the story with a different lens, and I think that will help me moving forward with rewrites.

In other news, I started working on a mystery project that I may dabble with when BOSTOP is giving me trouble but I still feel like writing. I’m in the early planning/researching stages right now, with only vague plot ideas floating around. I don’t even have a name for my main character yet. However, I am really excited by the prospect of this project. It’s totally different from anything I’ve written before.

I also did a little brainstorming on my epic fantasy that I will probably never have time to write.

 

Word Counts:

Blog/Newsletter: 916
BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL: 7,353
Epic Fantasy: 583

Total Words Written Last Month: 8,852
Total Words Written in 2022: 8,852

 

Plans for This Month:

My immediate goal for the month is to get Chapter 7 squared away. If I only do that all month, I will consider it a victory, but assuming that I manage to figure that out in a timely manner, I would really like to complete rewrites on Part 2 (Chapters 6-10) this month. That’s a little more than a chapter a week. Doable. But that depends entirely on how quickly I figure out Chapter 7, and whether or not the remaining chapters will require as much effort or not. We shall see.

Writing:

I took last month off from writing, which was a much-needed break after wrapping up rewrites on Part 1 of BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL in November. I did write up a monthly post and yearly wrap up, but that’s it. Having a full month off from writing gave me time to catch up on my reading and let my brain rest for a bit, though I still didn’t read as much as I would have liked!

 

Word Counts:

Blog/Newsletter: 2,897

Total Words Written Last Month: 2,897
Total Words Written in 2021: 87,293

 

Plans for This Month:

Tomorrow, I plan to dig back in to rewrites for BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL. In November, I finished revising Chapters 1-5. This month, I hope to make decent headway on the next section, Chapters 6-10 (give or take, depending on how scenes fall). I divided the manuscript up into five sections in the hopes that it would make revising easier. The second section currently sits at 37,000 words. I hope to whittle it down to around 25,000 by the time I’m finished with rewrites. If I can manage to rewrite 2-3 scenes per week, I should be mostly finished with this section by the end of the month, but we’ll see. The previous section took me quite a bit longer than expected!

Another weird year comes to a close.

Writing has been just as difficult in 2021 as it was in 2020, for much of the same reasons, plus a few more. Thankfully, I was able to get vaccinated against COVID-19 early in the year (and then the booster) and kiddo got a second dose of the vaccine last week, so my stress levels in regard to COVID are much more manageable now. Kiddo not being able to get the vaccine was my biggest concern for most of the year, so now that’s out of the way, I feel like I can finally relax, even with the new variant circulating. It’s been a huge weight off my chest.

Healthwise, I took a hit early in the year between a stomach ulcer and then a rapidly failing gallbladder, which meant a lot of medication, a lot of doctor visits, sudden severe weight loss, one ER scare (I swear I thought I was having a heart attack), and finally, surgery to remove my gallbladder in June (and it was very bad by that point; they literally found necrotic tissue in my gallbladder afterward). It took me a good six weeks to recover from surgery before I felt like myself again, and I still have pain from my surgery scars now and then. Diet has been a fairly easy adjustment, especially since I had to basically eliminate all fat from my diet for the months before my surgery. I can eat more than I did before, but I still have to be careful, or else I get sick. So while I don’t have to nitpick every ingredient every time I eat anymore, I still have to be smart about it. No entire bowls of cheese dip for yourself, Brooke. While it was a pain to have to go through, I’m in much better health now.

Between stress over COVID and kiddo being back in school, and then my health problems for the first half of the year, I didn’t get a lot of writing done, as you can imagine. But I did manage some. I did a lot of work on my homebrew Dungeons & Dragons campaign, which I’m still running (we’re about halfway through the first arc). I kept up with my writing blog each month, and posted on my gaming blog when I could. And I finally started rewrites on BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL in earnest, making decent progress in the latter half of the year. Obviously, I wish I could have done more, but considering everything on my plate this year, I’m proud of what I did accomplish.

I didn’t read as much as I would have liked, but I feel like I’m making up for it now. I’m averaging a book every two days right now (sometimes a single day), burning through a variety of murder mysteries. I got in a bit of a reading slump at the start of the pandemic, and I’m only now getting to the point where I can read for pleasure again.

Accomplishments in 2021

This year I…

Started rewrites on BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARLFinished rewrites on Part 1 of BOSTOPSurvived a traitorous gallbladder and surgeryFinished reading 12 books (D&D material excluded) so farRan an ongoing D&D campaign (21 sessions so far!)Kept up with both my blogs and my livestreams (though Patreon fell to the wayside)Took care of myself and gave myself permission to rest when I need itLearned how to make a damn good pie crustLeveled up my baking skills (I made choux!)Treated myself to some much-deserved kitchen upgradesWalked a mile nearly every day (when I wasn’t sick or recovering from surgery)Solidified some nebulous story ideas for future projects

 

Word Counts

First, month by month, then by project:

January: 8,425
February: 10,548
March: 8,868
April: 1,670
May: 3,551
June: 2,031
July: 3,697
August: 16,376
September: 12,835
October: 1,162
November: 2,553
December: 2,897*

Previously Uncounted: 12,680

2021 Total: 87,293*

*including this post

BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL: 13,565 26,245

I am scratching the first number because it is flat out wrong, despite that being what my tracking notes say I wrote on the project. I finished Part 1 of BOSTOP at 26,245 last month. The only thing I can blame for the discrepancy is that for several months, I didn’t track any of the words I edited. I just wrote “?” for the word count. So this is what the “Previously Uncounted” words come from.

BLOG / NEWSLETTER: 12,774CARTRIDGES & CATACOMBS GAMING BLOG: 8,468

I don’t keep up with this as much as I would like to, but it’s been a weird year for gaming for me too.

D&D: 38,039

Absolutely wild how much work I put into D&D this year.

PATREON: 772

Patreon fell by the wayside this year. I just can’t keep up with posting there on top of everything else, which is why I drastically scaled back this year, and from now on, it’s basically a tip-jar to support my writing expenses. Maybe in the future, I can expand it again, but for now, I’m putting it on the back-burner.

OTHER: 995

Not a ton of extra work this year. I did do a little bit of brainstorming on some different projects, which is where this comes in.

 

Goals for 2022 (and beyond)

My goals for the coming year are very straightforward:

Finish rewrites/edits on BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARLSend BOSTOP to betas & implement feedbackQuery BOSTOPRead more books

This is what I feel I can actually accomplish, barring any more health problems or pandemic lockdowns.

But, if I can, I would also like to:

Maybe start another project

As for what that project is… I’ve talked a little bit about my epic fantasy project STARCALLER (more so last year than this year). It’s morphed a bit over the last year, and I’m considering a much different approach to the whole thing. Instead of a chronological series with one big arc, I’m thinking of breaking the whole thing up into individual stories that are connected but are ultimately separate from each other. Same world with a bit of overlap between plots and characters, but not necessarily happening one after the other. The alternative is one gigantic epic sprawled across all of the characters and plots and multiple story arcs in chronological order, a la Game of Thrones, and that seems like a nightmare.

The plan at the moment would be for a five (or six) book series. Each book will follow its own storyline and set of characters in the same world, with a little bit of overlap, with the final book tying everything together. So, not necessarily a series of standalones, since they’ll build off of each other, but more of a loosely connected series. I don’t know if that explains it very well. Essentially, it will be like five origin stories and then a big ensemble with all of them at the end. If that makes sense. I have solid ideas for three of the stories so far. Still working on figuring out the others.

The first one is tentatively titled THE TOMB OF FALLEN KINGS, featuring an archeologist main character whose mentor goes missing and she has to unravel the clues he left behind. The other two ideas I don’t have tentative titles for yet, but one will be about a grizzled old warrior woman who is appointed as the young queen’s personal bodyguard as she seeks to ascend to sainthood, and the other will be about an exiled prince traveling to the realm of the dead to bring back his brother. The remaining stories, I haven’t settled on yet. I know one will feature a healer main character whose forest home is dying, but not much beyond that really.

Whether or not I actually start this epic fantasy project next year is unknown.

I have a few other ideas for standalone stories I want to work on too, including a cozy mystery and a contemporary fantasy that may take precedence depending on how I feel after finishing BOSTOP.

And I also have a couple of books that have been on the backburner for some time that I may revisit, namely, the sequel to THE GUILD CONSPIRACY, titled REBEL ENGINEER, which just needs a solid editing pass, and DARK LORD IN TRAINING, my middle grade fantasy that’s been about 75% finished for several years now. Again, I think it just depends on how I feel after finishing BOSTOP whether I want to dive into something completely new or finish one of my older projects.

Or maybe I’ll just take a long, well-deserved break.

Writing:

I finished Part 1 of BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL this month! After one round of intense rewrites and two rounds of edits over the course of several months, I managed to reduce the original word count of the first eight chapters and two prologues from 61,541 words down to five chapters (and no prologues!) at 26,245 words, which means I have cut 35,296 words from the book so far. I still have Parts 2-5 to rewrite and edit, so with luck, the total word count will shrink more and more, until I reach a normal length of book that can’t also be used as a blunt weapon.

I have to say I’m very pleased with the result of all this work so far. It took roughly four drafts to get to this point (and only on the first part of the book), but the story is getting closer and closer to the book I imagined it would be when I first came up with the idea. It feels good to have roughly 20% of the book complete (though it will need to pass the scrutiny of beta readers eventually) as I move on to the next section of the book.

 

Word Counts:

Blog/Newsletter: 768
BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL: (+315) edits
Cartridges & Catacombs: 1470

Total Words Written Last Month: 2,553
Total Words Written in 2021: 71,662

 

Plans for This Month:

I don’t actually have any plans for this month. I’m making a concentrated effort to not actively work on BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL this month, just because December tends to be a chaos month where I get nothing done anyway, and I do need time off on occasion, especially after such intense editing the latter half of this year. Taking the month off should help me gear up to work hard come January.

That said: I have been noodling some ideas that I may hash out in the meantime. I’m considering breaking into another genre/subgenre with slightly lighter fare, specifically romcoms and cozy mysteries, which may or may not feature speculative elements or settings. I don’t know if I can completely remove myself from fantasy, but I feel like these ideas have been spinning in the back of my mind for long enough that I ought to give an honest effort to make them happen.

I’ve also been noodling with ideas that play with form and format. I have an epistolary mystery (possibly murder, possibly aliens, possibly occult, idk) in mind that would be told across letters, bulletin notices, diary entries, newspaper articles, obituaries, and the like, that I’m really interested in trying out.

My current book is a monster to work on, so it would be nice to have something lighter to focus on when progress stalls on the main work. So that’s a possibility for this month.

I didn’t get to make as much progress on rewrites this month as I wanted as I was sick for the last two weeks. But progress is progress, so I won’t complain. I did run into a bit of a snag on one particular scene that I’m still trying to figure out, but I should get it figured out soon.

 

Word Counts:

Blog/Newsletter: 650
BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL: (-2,134)
Cartridges & Catacombs: 512

Total Words Written Last Month: 1,162
Total Words Written in 2021: 69,109

 

Plans for This Month:

More rewrites this month. I’m hoping to finish what I planned to do in October and finish polishing up Chapters 3-5. If I can get past the hurdle in Chapter 3 that I’m stuck on, the next two chapters should be easy enough to finish, and then I can get cracking on the next set of chapters.

Writing:

I’m really proud of the progress I made on BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL in September. I finished rewriting Chapters 4-6, finishing up Part 1 of the rewrite. I then printed out those pages and have been going over them again to try to improve them further, and I completed the first two chapters this week. I am honestly thrilled with how the rewrites are going now. I’ve already cut 33,000 words from the first six chapters, and as I go over them again, I’m cutting even more. At this point in the story, the first draft was 61,500 words. It’s now 28,400 words. Very significant edits! I’m confident I’ll be able to get the final word count to a much more reasonable number than the first draft was, at 272,000 words.

 

Word Counts:

Blog/Newsletter: 1242
D&D: 234
BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL: 10,500 (rewrites)
Other (Fantasy World-building): 859

Total Words Written Last Month: 12,835
Total Words Written in 2021: 67,947

 

Plans for This Month:

I’ll be continuing my rewrite progress this month, finishing polishing up Chapters 3-6 before moving on to rewriting Part 2, Chapters 7-10, which I’ll then polish up as well. I’m hopeful I can complete all of that this month. At this point in the editing process, I’m really just focused on getting the work done, as best I can.