March Check-In

Tabatha

April 1

It feels so weird to say this but the first quarter of 2024 is officially over. I have a feeling that if I sat down to look at raw numbers and goals for March alone I would be sadly disappointed in myself. So, we're going to look at March AND the first quarter. That seems safer, somehow.

Let's get into it.

Section 1: Individual Projects

As you likely know, I'm tracking the progress of any of my individual projects in 2024. I have 5 projects with enough progress made to actually warrant having pages of their own.

Here's how they all looked on January 1.

The YA Contemporary had already been fully drafted and had been through first round edits. I have PAGES of notes for this one and, as it turns out, even about four scenes that I wrote but have yet to fit into the actual document.
The Short Story Collection had 4 of the 10 stories fully drafted.
The Romance was fully drafted but had yet to undergo any edits.
The Apocalypse Project, despite being outlined twice in two different ways and having the start of a draft, had gone back down to the outline phase.
Lastly, the SlasherWIP had been completely drafted but had, also, undergone no editing.

The first quarter of 2024 has mostly been reserved for work on the short story collection. Currently, that progress page looks like this.

In March I was able to complete the first real edit on the story and lay out the next steps. I will have to take a break from this one for awhile, however, because the professional editor is going to work her magic soon.

So, in March, I had the opportunity to turn to another project for a bit. The YA Contemporary page now looks like this.

So many changes came from that last edit so I felt like it was important to dive back in and see if I can't fix any of those notes or add in any of those scenes.

Overall, MASSIVE growth on the short story collection for this quarter and I'm happy I was able to jump right into the next project.

Section 2: Monthly Progress

My monthly progress pages are designed to help give me focus in a given month. In February I came to the realization that my progress page needs to vary with my project focus in order to ensure myself success. For that reason, my March set up looks different than the previous months. I decided to focus on EDITING without giving up writing altogether.

Here's the beginning of the month:

And once the month was over:

Clearly, I didn't meet the first goal. I definitely didn't edit every single day. Looking back, that probably wasn't entirely reasonable. I don't always feel like I'm in the head space to edit. Every other day may have been more productive. I managed 12/31 days. But I managed to edit 29 chapters (or sections). Which means when I was in the right mindset, I was making decent progress.

I did also manage to write something every single week. 818 words on the blog, 2778 words on book reviews, 356 added to the short stories during edits, and 957 words added to the YA Contemporary during edits. Not too shabby for an editing focused month.

As for the 1st quarter totals, here are some numbers I've compiled from my notes and progress pages from previous months.

Words Written:

Project	Words Added in 2024
Idea Journal	5484
Book Reviews	9907
Blog	5431
Short Story Collection	20542
YA Contemporary	957

Overall Progress:

Words Written	42,321
Chapter Edited	57

How do I feel about this?

Honestly, not bad.

Are there months in the past where I could've knocked out this kind of total in a SINGLE month? Absolutely. But this is progress. It's solid progress on a project that was stalled for a long time. I'm happy with it and it sets the benchmark for the rest of 2024.

Section 3: Reading

My 2024 reading goal is to read and review 104 books. It's been that same way for a few years now, despite often meeting that goal ridiculously early in the year. 2 books per week is perfectly acceptable, even for a big reader like me. I set that goal and then I do the best I can.

March looked like this.

10 total books (about 128 pages read per day), everything I intended to read and a few more that I got to squeeze in.

Prefer covers? Cool, here they are.

Another month full of reads I'd highly recommend. If you're a cozy mystery fan, check out Buried in a Good Book. If you like science fiction, The Last Drop and its sequel Change of Tides are worth your time (there's more in the series too). If you like fantasy with great characters and some found family action, go for The Quest by Dani Hoots.

For fun, here are some first quarter reading stats for you.

35 Books Read/Reviewed

12,892 Total Pages Read

40% of the reads were independently published

Borrowed/Library	14.5
ARC/Review	13
Purchased	6.5
Gift/Giveaway	1

eBook	9
Audiobook	18.5
Paperback	3.5
Hardover	4

Contemporary	1
Fantasy	8
Historical Fiction	3
Horror	2
Mystery/Thriller	13
Romance	2
Science Fiction	6

Middle Grade	1
Young Adult	10
Adult	24

So that was my March, wrapping up my pretty successful first quarter.

Overall, I wrote just over 4,900 words and edited almost 30 chapters in March alone. I managed to finish the edits on the short story collection and moved onto editing the YA Contemporary (which seriously needs a title). Plus, I read and reviewed another 10 books, putting my total for 2024 at 35.

I would say the start of 2024 wasn't perfect … but it was pretty decent.

Now, onward into the second quarter.