March 11th, 2022 – 1,262

~ Sam Shuttleworth

While I’m staying a bit late after a busy day, it’s hard to overstate how much I love being back in the office. Before the world ended I took this for granted, even resented it some days, but now, I feel order and comfort. Is that sad? Absolutely. I am disgusting but I know what I’m about, and what I am about is having structure. I’ve also done some major editing today in the downtime, cutting over 3,000 net words from TUS, and creating a detailed story beat/chapter plan to whip it into shape. The bad news is that I need to cut 3,000 more words, and then add an eye-watering 23,000 back in, but on the positive side, I have a plan, and it’s going to be a much better book for it. HOF might be a dumpster fire right now, but when the time comes, I’ll do the same with that book too, and will make it even better.

Having a plan is nice.

Published by Sam Shuttleworth

I’m Sam, and I live to write. I spent most of the first 8 years of my adulthood trying to balance writing with a large amount of crap in my personal life, until towards the end of 2018 I threw everything out and started afresh with just my writing. I built the new me around one goal: I have to write at least 1,000 words a day. I called this goal 1K, and it changed my life. So long as I write a thousand words a day, the day is a success, and atop that I've managed over time to build the life I wanted all those years. My greatest flaws as a writer is I still use too many adjectives, adverbs, connectives as openers, accidental passive voice and I don't force my work down people's throats enough on pain of extreme and unusual torture. My greatest strength is I know my greatest flaws and I'm working on them.