Month-in-Review Highlights: February 2026

An image my spouse captured of us breaking out the old Monopoly game one weekend. February 14, 2026. Lausanne, Switzerland.

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.)

Well, February Februaried. Mostly damp, cold, and gloomy, with not much of note going on, not even social or cultural events for distraction.

All that made it a good month for staying indoors and making progress on my fiction when not working and handling all of life’s ongoing maintenance activities, so that’s what I did.

I shifted early in the month from the planning I had underway for one novel toward revising the other novel-in-progress. I’d finished the first draft of that in the final days of December. It had been sitting, sight unseen, since then. I wanted to let it rest for at least six week before I went back to it to see what I had.

And what did I have?

Well, the bones are solid, so that’s a good thing. I don’t see any major holes in the structure or global pacing, and I don’t see any scenes I should entirely cut or scenes I need to write. However, each scene unit needs extensive rebalancing to adjust its beats for pacing and emphasis and clarity, which is no minor effort. I’ll take that kind of work, though, over finding out that the bones are bad and the entire structure won’t hold.

Working on the revision, scene by scene, consumed the bulk of my February fiction efforts. Early in the month, I set a goal to have the second draft finished by the end of March. By the end of the month, with my hands immersed in the draft, an end-of-March goal seemed unrealistic, based on the amount of work each scene needed and the time the needed work had taken so far. As much as I’d like the second draft done by the end of March, better to do it right than to rush it. We’ll see how it goes. Tune in for an update in March’s month in review.

I didn’t see friends here in town as much as I’d have liked in February, but I did connect by phone, message, and e-mail a good deal with friends and family far away. That warms the heart, it really does.

I had a goal on  this year’s list to create a regular get-together event or activity for local friends and acquaintances, and February saw zero progress on that goal. Maybe a little more sunshine and movement in March (all hail spring!) will revive my energies for something like that, for me and for the people I’d like to invite. I think we’ve all been hibernating around here, working away in isolation and hiding out from the gloom, but I think we’re all also ready for that to change.