Baby steps
To cut to the punchline: I didn’t get anywhere near as much writing as I’d have liked to this month.
I even debated whether to publish a blog post at all. Why publish a blog post that says “Not much to see here, not much happened”?
But a lot has happened. And I’ve established the cadence, and until I officially change it, I should stick to it.
So, what have you been up to?
The dogs are both healthy and out of their cones, which is good. They’ve formed a habit of waking me up one to three times per night, and I have a terrible time falling back asleep afterward, so somehow addressing that is pretty high on my todo list.
And this mysterious, exciting, and scary other project will take the bulk of my time, attention, and headspace until the end of next year. I’ll share more later.
I am still writing, and I’m still trying to get a little done every day. If you write one page a day, you can write a novel in under a year. I’m still very much committed to finishing and publishing this book, just other priorities are rearing their heads right now.
More beta feedback
I got the feedback from my second beta reader!
It’s very encouraging. The positives and negatives echoed and expanded on my earlier feedback. Both of my beta readers side with me in my disagreement with my developmental editor. (I believe I didn’t sway their opinions at all here, but small sample size, non-double-blind experiment, etc. But I feel more sure of myself now.)
Even though all three of them highlighted areas they disliked and needed overhauling, they each enjoyed or loved the book. There’s a lot I need to fix, but it’s all fixable, and I believe I know how.
It looks like I’ve plotted a promising path forward, and I just need to walk it.
Draft 6 progress
I’ve started drafting, focusing on POV 1 for now. Since I largely restructured POVs 1 and 2, I’m largely either overhauling these beginning scenes or writing completely new ones. And you know how they say not to compare your first draft against someone else’s finished book? I’m struggling not to compare my newly written scenes against the scenes I’m replacing, scenes that have had multiple passes of polish. I think once I get past Act 1 there’ll be less rewriting and more editing, and I’ll be able to pick up the pace, but we’ll see.
Scenes: I’ve finished 6 scenes and started on a 7th. Extrapolating from my scene progress, I’ll finish draft 6 in under a year and a half =\
Chapters: I’ve finished 2 1/2 chapters. At this pace, I’ll finish draft 6 in over two years =\ =\
All of this is WAY slower than my desired soft deadline of finishing draft 6 before end of year this year. I’m hoping my pace picks up significantly, but I don’t know what’s coming over the next year. With all of the mysterious project planning and tasks, it’s hard to keep a grasp of draft 6 as a whole in my head, and I’m super grateful that I’ve mapped it out so clearly that I don’t have to. I just have to follow the next step I’ve laid out for myself.
Plans for the rest of the year
Over the next week or so I’m going to speak with a number of people that will help clarify the mystery project. Perhaps with a clearer roadmap there, I won’t have to worry as much, and that’ll clear headspace for other things.
As for the book, let’s revise my estimate way down, but still hope for a draft 6 in well under a year: I’m going to aim to finish POV 1’s re-draft by end of year. Possibly even give it a re-read and polish some things and start POV 2.
I mentioned above that I should keep the monthly blog cadence until I officially change it. Let’s officially change it; it makes more sense to blog when something happens and I have something to say. I’ll aim for at least one blog post per season, so the next one will be by end of year.
Stats
Draft 6, skewed a bit because I still have old words in the final scene I’m working on.
By those stats, it’s hard to see if I’m on track to cut or add words compared to draft 5, so I wrote a script to compare chapter by chapter.
So I’m on pace to keep a similar word count.