Happy last day of September.
I talked yesterday about how I wanted to be done rewriting the fifth draft of Part 2 by today and that I was disappointed that I won't make it. So, last night I sat down with my writing calendar for the next six months (yes, I have it planned out that far). Based on the progress and hurdles Part 1 has presented, I set an approximate publish date for Part 2 and worked backwards. Based on that, I have rewrites for Part 2 into Part 3 scheduled to end on October 12th. I want to work into Part 3 so the book parts flow together. However, I also sat down and counted approximately how many more chapters I'm going to need for Part 2. Currently, I have twenty more. I approximate I'll have to write five additional new chapters to round out what I've started. That brings Part 2 to a really nice and natural cliffhanger.
Side note: I was amazed as I wrote the first draft for part 2 that it just naturally came to this closing. When I sat down with the second draft, I made some major changes and I had a completely different ending in mind. Once again, it came naturally to the climax I had before. Well, I can't fight that. That's the ending. The second ending I had in mind has now become the ending of Part 3 and it works nicely, actually.
Anyway, that leaves me thirteen days to get Part 2 rewritten. So, I need to get two chapters done a day. That's do-able. But, I'd like it if I got into Part 3 by then so, I'm aiming for three chapters a day. That's still workable, I think.
The corrections for Part 1 are going. I sat down and took a hard look at what I'm correcting. I've begun another edit is what I've done. Last night, I finished repairing the corrections through chapter 10. I counted 71 things I changed. Going through it again, only 26 of those were grammatical or spelling type issues. The majority of the issues that NEED fixing are hyphens vs em dashes. Some of them didn't auto-correct in Word. Well, there's a formatting reason for that. In order to upload my manuscript for e-book, I have to have auto-correct off, which means I have to go through and paste in a symbol. Not a big deal, just takes time. I have caught a handful of spelling issues and once where I had two verbs and once where I had completely lost a word.
But, I need to turn the editor in me off. 2/3 of the corrections I made last night weren't necessary. The sentence was fine without the correction, I just thought it might sound better if I changed it. It's not a totally offensive thing to do, but I need to let it go, especially if the sentence is just fine the way it is.
So, I'm reading no more than three chapters a day to catch proofreading errors. I don't want to do more than that because I'm afraid if I rush through it, I'll miss something. That needs to be done by next Friday, October 7th.
Whew. Okay, we can do this. I actually work better under a little pressure. Three chapters a day to read and look for errors, five chapters a day to fix those errors (I'm reading at Chapter 28, fixing at Chapter 11 currently) and three chapters a day to write/rewrite. No problem.
Oh yeah, and walk the dog and fix supper and... HAHAHAHAHA. I love it!
See you tomorrow!
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