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If you’ve been following along from week to week, you’ll notice that I have made zero progress on draft 4 yet and that my list of to-do items has expanded by quite a lot, from 98 items to 123. But those numbers don’t alarm me because what they represent is a plan. I am a Virgo and plans make me feel calm, prepared, even inspired. Plans are the antidote to the wild forces of March. And yet, those forces are swirling out there, and I have to remind my Virgo self—always—to hold the plan lightly, to let it bend so I don’t break. To that end, I’ve assigned some rough dates to the important to-do items, like writing the four additional chapters I want to add to the book and doing a revision pass to incorporate the very helpful feedback I’ve gotten from my beta readers (thank you all again!). If March can just not act like a tantrumming toddler for once and be a sweet, peaceful little baby who goes down quietly for naps then I think I might have all of the writing and revision work completed by the end of April. I was hoping to have the book out this spring because it is very much not a light summer beach read, but I think June is a more realistic date at this point. I could hold the book until the fall and plan out a more robust prepublication marketing and publicity campaign but—I don’t want to. It feels like I have momentum now, and I want to keep riding that wave until I get the satisfaction of holding the finished book in my hand. In order to channel as much of my time and words as I can into these last few chapters, I’m going to slow this newsletter down to every other week until that stage of the work is done. Writers and revisers, I’m right here in the trenches with you! Let’s all get through the Ides of March intact and check in on the other side. If you need a line of encouragement in the meantime, let me know what you’re working on and I’ll send you one.
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