Is it just me, or is the year moving really quickly? But in a weird way: there’s part of me that feels like January and February took forever, but then I freak out because how is it March already?

It’s probably just me.

Anyway. February.

As a whole, it wasn’t a bad month for writing—I’m almost done with the current draft of Violet Lane, and I’m thrilled with the progress I’ve made there. Not just on my word count (though that’s been pretty good), but on the story itself—I like this story a lot. If you’ve been following along, you know that this is technically my third attempt at a first draft of this story: they’re all complete, and none of them are terrible, but they’re all very different, and this is the first time I’ve come close to telling the story properly. (Close. I’m not there yet.) I finally feel like I’ve figured out who these people are and what their story is actually about. 

I had two amazing writing weeks in February. I also had one absolutely terrible writing week, where I couldn’t focus on anything story-related; I managed one half-hearted writing session, and that was it.

And I’m ok with that. I still wrote a few thousand more words in February than I did in January, and I can literally see the finish line on this draft. I’ve still managed to dedicate two hours a week to studying craft, and I can’t wait to start applying the things I’m learning to my own writing. (And I’ve been learning so much! It’s been years since I’ve read a craft book that said anything new.) I’ve started to put together a clear action plan for my writing—not just setting goals and making plans, but breaking it down into day-to-day and week-to-week tasks that will help me achieve those goals.

So, yeah. That one terrible week? It happens, and I’ve finally reached a point where I can accept that and move on, instead of letting it derail my entire month. (Progress!)

Now I have to figure out how to apply that same thinking to photography.

I didn’t really expect February to be a productive month when it came to photography. I needed to take the time to decompress after Project366, and February isn’t a particularly inspiring month anyway—it’s all melting snow and mud, and I always have a hard time finding things to photograph. So I set my sights low.

Not low enough, apparently, because I didn’t build those photo study sessions into my week the way I wanted to, and I made limited progress on those business-related things that I’m still not talking about. But I did make some progress, and I’m starting to want to take photos again, so it’s possible that I just needed that decompression time even more than I thought.

That said, I think most of my attention in March is going to go to photography.

Not all—I’m going to wrap up the current draft of Violet Lane in the next week or two, and when I finish that, I’m going to take a few days to rest and then get started on the outline for the next thing. (I’m so excited about that one! I really wish I could say more than that, but I don’t even have a working title yet.) And I want to finalize my plans, start putting those systems into place. But in general, my writing is going to slow down at some point this month, and that’ll give me a good opportunity to start figuring out how to reincorporate photography into my day-to-day, and it’ll give me time to start making the same sort of plans for my photography that I’ve already made for my writing.

I still don’t know how it’s already March, and there’s still part of me that’s freaking out about that. But I’m looking forward to March. It’s going to be a good month.