In late July, I started working on a pass through my novel to clean up what I called the “mood arc.” I was feeling like all four of the protagonists tended to have whatever reactions I wanted them to have in any given scene, with not a lot of consistency. (I called it mood arc because I originally thought I would try to have a steady path of change over the course of the book for each of them, but that became less important to me as I went on.)<\/p>\n
So I went through the whole book taking notes on the emotional state of each of them in each scene, and then I went through my notes for each character's sequence and tried to determine what needed changing in each scene, and now I'm implementing those changes.<\/p>\n
All of which I think was good, and worthwhile. But I didn't devote enough time to it on any given day.<\/p>\n
In late July and early August, it was mostly five to twenty minutes a night. Then I left for the UK and pretty much stopped writing for three weeks. I don't think I did any writing in the UK, and when I got back I was sick, and insert more excuses here.<\/p>\n
When September arrived, I told myself I would write every day that month. And I did! I'm pleased about that. And for the first half of the month, I was doing at least half an hour a day most days.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, in the second half of the month it was mostly five to ten minutes a night, mostly just before falling asleep. So yay for consistency and yay for better-than-nothing, but boo for not setting aside enough time.<\/p>\n
This month, I plan to continue to write every day. But I also have a bigger goal:<\/p>\n
I'm hoping to finish the third draft by the end of the month.<\/p>\n
I'm not sure how feasible that'll be. There's a lot of work left to do, and if I can't get myself to spend more than ten minutes a day on it, it'll take a lot more than a month.<\/p>\n
But I'm hoping that making a public statement about it will make it harder for me to let things slide. We'll see.<\/p>\n
PS: The book is now at somewhere around 70,500 words (by word-processor count), which is surprising and nice; there was a long time when it seemed like no matter how much I added, it never went above 40k.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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