Memoir in Two Months - Update

It's January 25th, and I have completed 52221 words. I'm short 8,000 words of my goal to reach 60,000 by Jan 26th. While I didn't reach my goal, I'm still very pleased with the work I accomplished. Of course, there is nothing significant about the date Jan 26th, except that I go back to work tomorrow. That is to say, even though I didn't reach my goal, it doesn't mean that I'm going to quit the project. Mostly it was an arbitrary date to help get me motivated, and it worked! In that sense I've been successful.

In actuality, the story will probably take 68,000 words to tell in it's entirety. At the moment I've got 174 pages and 12 completed chapters. According to my draft, the plot will take another three chapters to fully reach it's climax and resolution.

These last two weeks, the pressures of preparing for a new semester with a new syllabus squeezed out my writing time, and in these last few days just flat out swallowed it up. I will of course keep working on the manuscript in the next few weeks to reach completion, but I won't be able to keep the pace of this Christmas break.

My plan was to write the rough draft, then put it on the back burner during the semester. Get some space so that over the summer I can return to it with fresh eyes. I'll edit over the summer and my ultimate goal is to take the manuscript, with proposal, to one book conference by the end of the year.

So that's my long term plan. It's been so nice to have the accountability of posting my progress in this space. Thank you for letting me share this writing journey with you!