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GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

• My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
• Where I planned to be: Spent at least 30 mins
• Where I am: Done with edits for the moment
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
I finished typing in my edits. I kinda want to do a read-through just to check everything over before sending it to my editor, but I’ll see what kind of free time I have next week. Classes are starting bright and early Monday morning. Online, of course, but I’m expected to be in the video chat at 8, so…

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

• My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks (except L17 and L21, which get 4 weeks min)
• Where I planned to be: Lesson 18, finished
• Where I am: Lesson 18, finished
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
This lesson is kind of a gimme, since it’s meant to sort out things I… don’t actually have a problem with. I’ve never tried to use language that would make me sound “smarter” or gone “word shopping”. I hate reading purple prose, so why on Earth would I write it? I write the way I talk, and in dialogue, I do my best to write the way my characters would talk. And don’t get me started about commas… I know where they should go grammatically – thank you, useless English degree – but I also will put them where I think a comma should go. Like, where you would naturally pause in a sentence while speaking. So really I just used it to give myself an excuse to read through the whole thing as it stands now.

The story definitely reads better, but it’s obviously shorter. WAY shorter. There are a LOT of pages of just big red X and nothing else. I think I cut way more than I added. Not to mention the stack of pages I didn’t even touch because the scenes on them got cut completely.

There’s at least 100 pages there. Untouched, unread, trash. Or at least, according to my outline. Maybe I’ll find something to put back in.

But it doesn’t feel right to me yet. Something’s missing. I’m not sure what yet.

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

• My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
• Where I planned to be: 33000 words
• Where I am: 33019 words
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:

GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

• My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
• Where I planned to be: Spent at least 30 mins
• Where I am: Somewhere
• On Target or Behind: Probably on target

How’s It Going:
The bad news is, the copyeditor I was going to use has disappeared off the face of the planet.

The good news is, instead of typing in my edits on Tuesday, I spent most of the morning trying to find someone else and I was… pleasantly surprised at how easy it was. All three of the folks I queried responded very quickly (although one was booked solid until November of next year! and another was… very pricey) and I’m scheduled for the week of September 14th.

Which means I need to have my changes typed in by the 13th, which gives me… 3 weeks. Piece of cake. (I’ve been going backwards so the page numbers stay lined up between page and screen, and I’m already on page 11, so.)

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

• My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks (except L17 and L21, which get 4 weeks min)
• Where I planned to be: Lesson 17, finished
• Where I am: Lesson 17, finished
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
IT’S DONE.

Okay, it’s not done done, but this part of the revision is probably the most brutal and time consuming, especially for this book (probably for any book, idk), and I managed to do it in a few weeks instead of…

…years. -coughs-

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

• My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
• Where I planned to be: 31500 words
• Where I am: 31885 words
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
If you’ve ever seen Bob’s Burgers, just imagine the groaning noise Tina makes when she’s anxious.

For everyone else, here’s a clip. (It’s also a… startlingly accurate representation of how I felt the first time I drove a car, except I knew how to turn and I didn’t hit anything).

Everything’s fine, I promise, I’m just… Ehhhhhhhh.

GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

• My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
• Where I planned to be: Spent at least 30 mins
• Where I am: Going crazy
• On Target or Behind: Who’s even keeping score right now

How’s It Going:
Little over halfway through typing up my edits. So far I’ve actually added a couple of pages. It’s not a lot, but I like that I’m adding. It’s kind of short to begin with.

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

• My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks (except L17 and L21, which get 4 weeks min)
• Where I planned to be: Lesson 17, 40 scenes in
• Where I am: Lesson 17, 41 scenes in
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
I swear I’m not trying to make this easier on myself, it’s just happening.

As I was going, I realized that one scene just… didn’t make any sense in the context of what was happening, so I took it out. And then there were two different scenes that had one scene between them, but I realized squishing them together would make for a stronger scene. So, yeah, got rid of two scenes in one go, and suddenly I’m ahead? Amazing how that works. Math, y’all.

But, at least it puts me on track (finally) for finishing this part up next week. I’m… actually kind of dying to read it all the way through now. With all the changes I’ve made and all the stuff I’ve added, it is… almost a whole ‘nother novel.

I’m curious how many full pages I’ve cut completely. Like, big red X across the whole page, nothing cut out and taped somewhere else. I’m sure there’s a lot.

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

• My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
• Where I planned to be: 30000 words
• Where I am: 30256 words
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Even though I have an idea for how this ends, I still have another 20k words to go here, hopefully. After Krasnaya, I’ve discovered that this is another difficult stretch for me. I have an idea of where I want to go, but getting there is either too easy or, like now, seemingly impossible. I’m at the point where I need to figure out how and why my characters go from point A to point B. So this week, I kind of forced a reason for the main characters to come across the villain (and I’m already anticipating a wild ride of a revision), and then I have to figure out what they decide to do from there.

Of course, there are two whole love stories in here that I have been beating around the bush on, one of them quite purposely. (The situation was… not a good time. At all.) So I think that will be the key to filling out this last half. Especially since one character is down for the count at the moment, and definitely not ready for battle.

I haven’t put up a snippet in a while, mostly cause I don’t want to spoil what’s going on, but I think this one will do.

NOTE: The following material is a copyrighted excerpt from raw, unedited first draft, which may contain typos and spelling or grammar errors. Please do not point out corrections or make suggestions as I will not see them during revision. Please do not quote this material, as it may not survive to final draft.

“I’ve never shot anything before,” a woman was saying, the one the other was giving advice to. “My husband wanted me to learn, but I never…”

“That’s alright, honey. Trust me, these things are huge, which makes them a lot easier to hit. Put a few good rifle rounds into them, they’ll go down.”

Jillian laughed. “What a crock of shit.”

Carly shushed her.

GOAL 1) PUBLISH SKOS

• My Goal: Spend at least 10 mins, 3 days/week minimum
• Where I planned to be: Spent at least 30 mins
• Where I am: Feeling like I’m closing in
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
I got through all the notes I left for myself based on Matt’s notes, either writing new stuff or tweaking old stuff. And I’ve started typing all the changes in! Once I’m done with that, I’m gonna do one last read through and before I send it off to a copyeditor. (I don’t know what happened to the guy on the forums who was going to read this. I assume he just got busy, but since he was doing it for free, I’m not bothered.)

Why a copyeditor? Because even though I’m fantastic at finding typos (I even found one while doing this edit lol), this is gonna be the first novel by me that people see. And even though I know it’ll never be perfect, I want it to be damn close. And another set of eyes on this thing that I’ve spent WAAAYY too long staring at will be good for spotting any lingering problems.

Also, fun fact: I’m an idiot I got curious and did some digging in my files. And, uh, I found the original idea for this that I submitted as part of my final project for my first creative writing class (including the incredibly descriptive and stolen title! Sorry, Dan Brown.) And I’ve been completely wrong about how long I’ve been working on this.

Proof positive, I started this adventure over 7 and a half years ago. *side-eyes Past Me*

GOAL 2) REVISE SYCU

• My Goal: 2 Lessons per month/ 1 Lesson every 2 weeks (except L17 and L21, which get 4 weeks min)
• Where I planned to be: Lesson 17, 36 scenes in
• Where I am: Lesson 17, 34 scenes in
• On Target or Behind: Behind

How’s It Going:
Yes, I’m accounting for another week of this. Is work putting a damper on this? Kinda. I’m not a morning person, and most of the week I’m working the afternoon. It’s hard for me to wake up early to get stuff done before work, and if I want enough sleep, I can’t stay up until 2AM anymore either. Especially not Thursday night, since I work Friday morning.

But, I’m doing the best I can, the most I can, and I am hitting more easy scenes. There’s still one brand new scene, I think? And the rest will at least pull something from the existing draft. Not to mention the way the math works, the last week will leave me with a little wiggle room. So yeah, doing good so far.

GOAL 3) SURVIVAL

• My Goal: 500 WPD, 1500 WPW
• Where I planned to be: 28500 words
• Where I am: 29003 words
• On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
I managed to push through my “where the hell am I going with this” and got some pretty good stuff, I think. I hesitate to call it “writer’s block” because true writer’s block is due to more dire circumstances and much harder to overcome, and true writers don’t fling the term around looking for pity.

The majority of writers who claim to have writer’s block are actually using it as a way of claiming to be writers without ever having to go in and sit down at their computers to work.

How To Beat Writer’s Block, Holly Lisle

I’m grateful that I haven’t needed to buy that course yet. You’ll notice also that I met my weekly word count. 😉 (And yes, I absolutely am calling out Past Me today for being such a lazy, insufferable, pretentious asshole who definitely tossed out more than my fair share of “writer’s block”s as excuses to party during my first three years of college when I should have just been writing. Salty does not even begin to cover it. Seven freaking years, you little shit…)

Also, I kinda have an idea for the ending now, maybe? I don’t know if it’s any good, but it’s better than “and then they all died, the end”. So we’re getting somewhere, it seems.