My Writing Efforts in February.

In an attempt to motivate myself, I decided at the start of this year to write a monthly blog post about 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 in January, and in three fewer days. So, I averaged 173 words a day for the month, 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 fourth. 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, both of which 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 films’ disability aspects, highlighting whether the characters with disabilities were realistically portrayed and what experience the movie’s writers had with disabilities.

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

Blog Writing.

I just squeezed in the four blog posts last month, posting the last on the 28^th 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 saw Childs at last year’s Melbourne Writers Festival. Hopefully, it won’t take me 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 every day of the month.

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