First of all… Sorry that my video wasn’t showing up last week! I messed up somewhere and the post never made it out of draft mode. I don’t know what happened other than I clicked (or didn’t click) the right thing.

So if you were looking for last week’s storyworld building video, here is the link to it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgUm7D0DvWw

Over the past few weeks I hit a snag in my novel that slowed me down. I got to that place that I always get to—the place where the book kind of stalls. I have a good idea where I’m going, but I’ve started to make a mess of things, and I feel like I can’t keep adding words until I fix it. I talked about this in my last Jill report, but back then I think I was in a bit of denial that I could simply push through and write to the end anyway.

Alas, I could not.

So two weeks ago I took two ENTIRE days to completely break apart my manuscript. I went through and wrote an index card for every scene. Then I laid them all out on the living room floor, moved them around (there were lots of holes), and I plotted and rearranged and plotted some more until I had filled in all my holes and things were flowing in a logical sequence. Then I stacked up those cards and went through my manuscript and reorganized the file. I put all the scenes in order, added the new chapter headings I’d just brainstormed with a note of what needed to happen in each, and made sure my Word document matched my stack of cards.

Here is my completed newly storyboarded novel.
And here is my repaired book in index card form!

Then I started at the beginning and began to edit. I didn’t want to. I wanted to keep up my 7500 words a week! But I know I’ll be saving myself time later on if I fix things now and get the story flowing as it should be with all the right characters behaving the way I want them to.

So that slowed me down. Looking at my goal of writing 7500 words a week, I came close on the week of February 18 and managed 7396 words, but the following week I only wrote 3953 words. And this week so far I’m only at 2535. (But there is still time. Mwa ha ha!)

This was a delay that ensured I did not meet my goal of finishing my first draft by the end of February. March was meant to be for editing! Yet now here I am in March, doing some editing on a book that isn’t quite finished. I hope to catch up in my edits this week and have two really strong weeks of writing, then be able to finish my edits through the end of March. I’ll check in then and let you know how I did.

How about you? How are you doing toward achieving the goals you set? Share in the comments.

Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms, and the author of several young adult fantasy novels including the Blood of Kings trilogy. She loves teaching about writing. She blogs at goteenwriters.com and also posts writing videos on her YouTube channel and on Instagram. Jill is a Whovian, a Photoshop addict, and a recovering fashion design assistant. She grew up in Alaska without running water or electricity and now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two kids. Find Jill online at jillwilliamson.com or on InstagramYouTubeFacebookPinterest, and Twitter.