Greetings and salutations. It is I, Graham.

Hello, Readers! It’s Clevenger here.

Graham: Ever since we started our blog, our formula has been that we pick a topic. Clevenger gives his say on Wednesday, then I give my rebuttal on Sunday. Apparently, he is tired of me getting in the last word, because he is interested in swapping up for a few months, and letting me lead the topics on Sundays for a while.

Clevenger: Yeah, it’s not about “getting in the last word” so much as spicing it up! I think we’ve had a great start to our blog, and I think 2022 will be no different. And I just wanted to have a shared conversation for the end of the year. 2021 had some points, but it’s been an exceptional year! 

G: Yeah, 2021 was no joke. We wrote a book and a half, while dealing with Covid, family, and way too much else. The blog has been surprisingly fun to write, and not terribly difficult to keep up with. Pushing to keep up with social media is weird. I don’t really think that is a thing either of us have ever really tried to push before. But it’s definitely a thing. Anyway, back to our writing.

C: Right. So writing wise, what are we at? Based on the numbers, we are still trending amazingly. Overall progress is still ahead of schedule. We’ve got a great start on where we wanted to be. 

Manticore’s Shadow is in editing… slowly. First draft ended at 83K words, and is now at 86K. I know we still have some major rewrites of some pivotal scenes that are on deck, but it looks good. 

Book Two, First Draft is done and sits at 122K words. We’ll be letting that sit for a bit while we work on other points. 

And, we have about 15K words in Book Three, and 3K words in Book Four. And I know we’ve talked about waiting until all drafts are sketched out so that we can do the final edit of Manticore’s Shadow and add foreshadowing elements and ensure we don’t have any chronological inconsistencies.

G: Wow, so on the one hand, we did good. On the other, we messed up. We burned through a 120K rough draft of Book Two in about ten weeks. Kudos to us! However, not speaking for Clevenger, but I burned myself out. Finishing my first semester of school after having been a dropout for two decades, writing nonstop, plus a lot of illness and family issues, they all added up.

C: Yeah, I think at the end of the year, I kinda lost my path. And once I took some time off, it’s been hard to get back on track. I open the notes and look over what we’ve written. I’m so proud of Manticore’s Shadow and the story we’ve told, but I cannot seem to find my portal back into our world in Book Three. Even though, when I look at the notes, I see some really,  REALLY cool things we have planned. I just cannot “see” it yet. 

But I think I’ll get there. And I think that when we were both “in the“zone” in Book Two, it helped. I was feeding off your ideas. I think us both being in a slump at the same time is what’s hindering me. 

G: In addition, we are constantly reminding ourselves that this is supposed to be a hobby, for fun. None of our deadlines are set in stone. Of course, we are absolutely going to work hard to get back into our groove and knock out Book Three. But we also won’t beat ourselves up if it takes a minute.

C: And I think it’s been a lot of progress for the Books that isn’t writing. We’ve started this blog, and you’ve cultivated a great following on Twitter for us. I think there’s a lot of the “business” side of writing that we’ve been focused on to close up 2021. 

G: I think that for the most part, we have also done a good job of prioritizing “real life” over writing, as much as we wish we could just go live in Sainan. But overall, even with this break, we are doing good. We had Christmas set as our deadline for book two, so even taking more than a month off, we are still exactly where our planned track said we should be.

C: Yeah, my progress tracker puts us on schedule for 3K words a week. That’s a scene or two each week and we’ll have the Book Four first draft finished by July and be ready to put some serious editing on Manticore’s Shadow. So, I think we’re still doing quite well. It just feels like we’re struggling. But I look at the numbers and we’re over 60% done with the project. Which is amazing!

G: Absolutely! We teased with 3500 words for each of us a week being the goal we wanted, in order to stay ahead. That seemed to work well for you, and I know it worked for me. I got amazing motivation out of keeping an over/under count in my tracker, and watching my buffer grow.

C: I know we talked about it in the Mental Health series of posts, but I love you, man. This has been one of my lifelong accomplishments. I honestly can’t believe that we already have nearly a quarter of a million words (226,097 to be precise) of OUR story in black and white! That’s just mind boggling. 

G: Don’t put up numbers like that! You’ll scare me! I get that each book is roughly a hundred thousand words. But why do you have to say a quarter million? Million? Really? Talk about breaking my mental health. But yes, I love you, too, and this wild ride would not be possible without the both of us. 

C: Numbers never lie! But I’ll back down. So, blog-wise, what are we starting 2022 with? What topics do we have on the horizon?

G: Well, most of our blogs thus far have reached internally, exploring and explaining our processes, goals, histories. I think that next we should start looking outward, and discuss our influences, both in books and authors, as well as educational sources we have found, and what writing advice we have found most useful to follow, or even ignore.

C: Yes! The writing community is amazing, and there are a lot of things we’ve discovered during these last two years. Plus dozens of years of reading and pulling in story sources from our favorite books and authors. I’m excited to share that with everyone. Sounds like a great way to start the new year! 

Well, I think that’s everything I’ve got… anything more from you?

G: I think we’ve said about all we can at this time.  I guess we will see you Sunday, when I start up a discussion on authors that influenced me, whether I like them as a person or not. So until then!

C: To all of our readers, be kind! See you next year.

G: Don’t forget to love one another.