My Writing Efforts in February.


In an attempt at motivation, I decided at the start of this year to do a monthly blog post on my writing efforts for the previous month. 

Novel Writing. 


I am still writing Branded, a science fiction, young adult novel. In February I added 4841 words, 25 words more than for January, and in three less days. So I averaged 173 words a day for the month as compared to 155 words a day in January.

The novel is now just under 65,000 words. It has five parts and I am probably a quarter of the way into the forth. It still looks like the novel will be somewhere between 90,000 and 100,000 words.

I am still very much enjoying writing it. The dysfunctional group of characters are barely getting on at the moment, but not for much longer. 

Non-Fiction Writing. 


I wrote two articles for Divine in February and both went up on the website during the month. Both were reviews of films whose central character has a disability. One was a review of Still Alice, a film where the main character has early on-set Alzheimer’s, and the other was a biography of scientist Stephen Hawking, The Theory of Everything. 

My reviews concentrated on the disability aspects of the films, highlighting whether the characters with disabilities where realistically portrayed, and what experience the movie’s writers had with disabilities.

My next article fits in with those reviews as I research why characters with disabilities are rarely portrayed by actors with that disability. 

Blog Writing. 


I just squeezed in the four blog posts last month, posting the last on the 28th of February. 

Reading. 


I actually finished reading a novel - yay for me - the very good  Zoo City by Lauren Beukes. I reviewed it in my last blog post. It only took me four whole months to read – my excuse is tiredness as for about nine weeks of those four months I was sick or taking a medication that made me tired.

I am currently reading No Limits by Holly Childs, a hip novella, full of hip people doing hip things. Like Beukes, I also saw Childs at last year's Melbourne Writers Festival. Hopefully it doesn’t take four months to read her book.

Critiquing. 

 

Like in January, I did not make time to critique anyone else’s writing in February. Not good.

Also like in January, I wrote on every day of the month.

Health permitting, I hope to greatly improve on my writing and reading efforts in March so these monthly posts don’t continue resembling a guilt sheet.

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