Month-in-Review Highlights: February 2025

Me working in the living room to enjoy the sun marking the calm before the storm of the head cold and then the death of the computer partly pictured. Lausanne, Switzerland. February 14, 2025.

I postmortem each month shortly after it ends. Previously, I used these posts to hold myself accountable on progress toward my annual goals. Starting in January 2023, I broadened these posts to address more generally my observations and experiences for the month. (To read previous months’ reviews, click here.)

Strange how the months pass so quickly and yet, when I sit down to reflect on how I progressed against my goals only the month before, everything that happened already seems so long ago.

After wrapping up a first pass on the possible plot points for my next novel attempt in the first week or so of February, I returned to the manuscript draft for the other novel-in-progress to commence the work of the second draft.

For me, the second draft is the one where I fix all the story problems, whether in how the story and characters are coming across on the page, in recalibrating the emphases in different scenes to ensure I’m hitting the right notes in the right places, or in resolving plot problems I hadn’t seen until I had a fully finished first draft. (On the latter, I’m trying to get better about seeing them before I have a fully finished first draft. Because whew.)

My plan is to have the second draft done by the end of May or mid-June. Earlier, if possible. I want to let the second draft sit a good while before I return to the manuscript for the third draft. The third draft is where I work on the language and line-level craft, provided that I don’t see more story problems after a reread that require me to call the effort “draft two, part two.”

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

I count it as a win and an encouraging sign for my motivation that I kept the writing work moving on schedule in February despite catching a head cold midmonth and then having my ancient computer give up the ghost only a day or so after I’d started to recover, requiring me to continue the work on the manuscript via a flash drive and a borrowed laptop.

Another win that, despite the headwinds (and head cold), I still grabbed the few moments I had earlier and later in the month to get together with friends over good food and to visit a couple of museums, one in Paris while there on an overnight trip and another here in Lausanne.

The computer conundrum meant that the blogging and the social-media posting dropped to almost zero, but I’m back in form now thanks to the purchase of a brand-spanking-new beauty of a machine that, after the two weeks I suffered computer-less, I’m even more thankful for than I would be otherwise.

Onward, March!