A drip-feed of encouragement

March was a relatively quiet month for marketing and promotion, but the Shapers of Worlds volume V anthology finally released. Leading up to the launch came a full review published on the website Tangent. Overall, the anthology was well received, but not every story got a strong endorsement.

Writers are not supposed to look for external validation of their work, but getting a positive review sure does feel good. And I was very happy to see my story got one:

"Magic That Cannot Be Undone . . . is very good. It’s a simpler yet deeper tale — no blood and gore, just uncomfortable realisations by a postulant wanting to have their magic unlocked."

It's a cliche sentiment for writers, but just the one positive review was enough to buoy me up through the rest of the week. When friends and family tell you that they like your work, you can appreciate the support but it's more a commentary on you as person than your writing. When a stranger says they like your work, then you know it's the other way around. I don't need to be constantly told that I'm doing quality storytelling, but the occasional "Good job" helps make the much more common rejections and self-doubts easier to endure.

Drafting progress for the month was decent. I added about 10k words and broke the 80k mark for the entire novel. I've got five chapters left to complete, which I expect to be about 25k words and take me until the end of May or early June. I've been happy with my consistency from month to month and think thing that writing this third book is coming along faster and easier than the previous two.

Thanks for stopping by.