December 1, 2016 Thoughts about yesterday's post.

    So, I figured out the dilemma I was experiencing last night.  I realized this morning while I was painting, that I may have sounded like I was whining yesterday in my post.  Oh, whoa is me, I have to try to get a magazine interview.  :/  Why is success so hard?
    But that's not what it was.  It was more frustration in myself and the decisions I make in my life.  In almost everything I've done, it's at this point that I say: Okay, I've figured it out.  Now it's time to go figure something else out.
    I've done this a lot.  With my crocheting, I very rarely finish a project.  I figure out the pattern and how to make the pretty design and then I move on to another challenge.  This is only one example.
    Another would be my Geology degree.  I'm 18 credits away from having a Bachelor's of Science in Geology.  What did I do when I got to the last semester?  I looked at everything and asked if it was really what I wanted.  Did I really want to be a geologist?  Did I really want to make that kind of commitment?  There are other things that interest me.  So, I changed my major and tried some other things, eventually dropping out completely.
    Real Estate, Nursing, dare I say marriages as well, they have all fallen victim to my apparent fear of success.
    I've gotten some of them figured out.  I have finally found a man (actually, we were put together) I can be with, who challenges me and refuses to give up on me.  I went from Real Estate into being a stay-at-home mother which I found really satisfying.  Finding something to do with my time is what led me to pick up an old interest of writing.
    I prayed about this whole thing this morning.  So far, I've stayed on the easy side of things.  Whether I succeed at producing a book is totally up to me; it's all under my control.  Getting people to buy it, putting it out there for people to see--more people to see--that's not under my control and introduces risk.
    This is the point where I usually decide to pull up stakes and move somewhere else.
    I have a problem, however.  I love my characters.  This is a story I NEED to get out.  I feel like I'm being inspired to write this.  This is beyond me.
    If I'm going to be an agent of my Heavenly Father, if I'm going to do what he asks me to do--and I feel this is something he's inspiring me to do--then I have to do what it takes to get it out there.
    I have to call the magazine... and the t.v. stations.  I have to make the appointment for the book signing and the library reading.
    Then I have to remember my own advice from just a couple weeks ago and ask myself:  How bad do I want it?

    I've painted this morning.  My living room is shaped like a fat 'L'.  The walls are painted what I describe as a Dijon mustard yellow.  It's not horrid, but it's not spectacular either.  What makes it worse (and most of the houses I've seen in California have this downside) is that the paint is flat.  You can't clean flat paint.  When you have four teenagers, this is not a good thing.  What boggles me, is that the couple we bought the house from raised three kids here.  They should know this.
    The one side of the living room is very dark.  There is 80's style track lighting which isn't very bright and the room is dark.  So, I'm painting it a white satin and putting some color into the trim.  This is what I've done so far today:

Before

After one coat.  It's still wet in a couple places.

    I only taped off about a fourth of the floor in this section.  I didn't want the kids tracking paint through the house, that's why I'm not doing the whole thing all at once.  Besides that, I also want to be working on the book during the day.  This way, I paint for two or three hours and then write some as well.
    I think there will need to be three coats with the roller and two with the brush.  That seemed to be what the situation was when we painted my daughter's room.  So, tomorrow, I'll start with the second coat of roller, trim in the edges again and then hopefully I can to the third coat and be ready to move the plastic to the next section.
    As far as writing is concerned, I'm going to get a couple chapters in Part 2 read and edited.  I hope to get them through a grammar program that ISN'T Word.  If I still have daylight, I hope to begin the third draft of Part 3 and get the first two chapters rewritten.
    Those are my hopes and dreams.  The kids will be home soon so I better get started.
    Talk to you tomorrow.

November 30, 2016 Why is success scary?

    I didn't write anything today either.  I'm totally okay with the 176,000 I manged to get over the course of the first 24 days of the month.  Totally.
    My burnout is wearing off.  Today, I was spontaneously thinking about my characters and some things.  I had a few small revelations, but I didn't get them down.  If they're supposed to be there, they'll come back.
    I did get some plot work done.  It's not all of the story line, I'm missing a bit, especially towards the end.  Some of it might need to get moved around.  I do have enough to get through most of the book and plug things in as I go.  That's major.
    Tonight, I'll get Part 3 mapped into my overall plot line Excel sheet.  It's a handy thing.  On the left, I have the days of the week listed.  Across the top, is each of the two main and several major characters.  The events are then plotted out so they lace together.
    Tomorrow, I'm going to do a little bit of painting in the living room.  Then, I'm going to read and grammar-ize two chapters in Part 2.  If I have some time left over, I'm going to come back around to the beginning of Part 3 and start the third draft with the new timeline.  There's no sense in finishing the second draft.  I've changed enough of Part 2 that only the skeleton of the last half of Part 3 remains.
    I also met with one of my alpha readers today and gave her a copy of Part 2.  The last one will go out tomorrow.  That's exciting.  I'm moving along. 
    The lady I met with today, her husband has worked for one of the local magazines.  He gave me contact information to get a hold of someone there to see if they'd like to do a local piece on me.  He also told me to contact the local t.v. stations.  It's kind of intimidating.
    I talked with my husband about it tonight.  He told me that if I want this to do really well, I need to jump in and swim in the deep end.  Why is success scary?  It's not even success at this point.  It's potential success.  And it frightens me.
    I still haven't locked down a book signing with the local Barnes and Noble.  That's been out there since August.  I also had an offer from a local librarian to do a reading.  I told both of them I'd have to think about it.  Why didn't I jump at them?
    My hubby has a good point.  I can continue to be a stay-at-home mom who paints her house and writes/publishes OR I can be an author who paints sometimes... and still stays at home.
    I'm sitting here crying because it scares me to death.
    I'll let you know what happens.

November 29, 2016

    No writing done yet today.  I don't think that it will happen, either.  Neither will painting.  I fell this morning and twisted up my knee.  Having it elevated and under ice is what the plan is.  Beyond that, I don't know.
    Maybe, I'll get some plotting done.  Get the timeline for Part 3 hammered out.  That sounds like a plan.  We'll see.
    I have also had thoughts of reorganizing this blog and making it a little neater.
    I'll check in tomorrow.

November 28, 2016

       I'm done with NaNo 2016.

        So, Plotting.  Yeah.  That's what I was going to work on to help spur me into the last week of NaNo.  So, I did and then did nothing else.  Actually, I really didn't need to plot much.  It's basically already there.  There's some nuance stuff that's not but it can really only come out when I'm writing/rewriting/editing.  Only about half of Daniel's stuff is written, but I'm not sure where it goes.  It's dependent upon what day of the week it is, so that will depend on where things fall timewise.  That's what needs to get figured out.

        I suppose sitting down, putting the events on cards and mapping it all out will be what I need to do.  I'm too locked into the timeline when I look at the plotlines I have mapped in Excel.  But it's set up on a daily basis, locking things into specific places.  What I need to do needs to be more fluid than that.  I need to get it all pieced together without the day to day in my line of sight.

        I stopped writing for NaNo.  I didn't do any writing for the last two days and what I did on Friday was only my blog and my journal.  That's it.  A very teeny portion of me feels guilty for not finishing the month, but I was burned out.  Completely and totally.  I spent the weekend playing on Sims.

        That was good.  I was able to clear my mind.  I started having spontaneous thoughts about the book a little here and there.  Not what it has been but it's coming back.

        I can do these last three days but I'm not sure if I'm going to.  I'm looking forward to the editing process of Part 2.  I'm planning for that… and to paint the living room.  I'd like to have the painting done so I can put up the Christmas tree.  But, I'm going to work on both of them.  I'm not in a rush to paint nor to edit.

        So, that is what it is.  I got 176k words logged into this NaNo.  It might be a little more if I decide to do some over the next few days, but if not, I got a pretty impressive number and it's a personal record.

        I think it's done.  NaNo 2016 for me, is done.

 

        I printed out the alpha versions of Part 2.  Here's a picture:

 

      The duck is sitting on an alpha version of Part 1 and represents 43 of the 49 chapters, less 10,000 words from the final print.  Part 2 is on the left and seems to be a little bit bigger....

      I'll check in tomorrow.

November 25, 2016

  Thanksgiving was a wonderful time.  We ate, talked and played games.  Spectacular.
  I even stayed until 8:30, which was two hours past what I had planned on.  It was all good.  I felt refreshed and renewed afterwards.  Good times, good times.
  We, as a family, talked to two of our children yesterday.  They're a good sixteen hour drive away so we don't see them often.  It was good to talk to them.  We're planning on Skyping with them both at some point this weekend.
  Yesterday was a light writing day.  I didn't quite get to 5k.  I sat down to write after we got home and I just didn't have it in me.  I'm thinking there's a week off coming next Thursday.  Or, a scaled down version of a writing work day.  I need to start editing Part 2.  At first I thought I'd go through one chapter a day--just comb through it slowly and catch all the errors that four re-throughs by myself and my editor didn't catch.  Be methodical.  Then I realized that would have me publishing sometime in September and that's too far out.  I settled on two chapters a day.  That's gets us back to the May-June time span.
  Last night and this morning, I've been thinking about Part 3.  It's a mess, they way I've started rewriting it.  A disaster.  Scenes are everywhere.  Bluh.  I'm playing with the idea of starting the rewrite over.  I don't know.  I don't like the sporadic-ness.
  Well, I should do something.  Maybe I'll get out the index cards and the markers.  I'm liking that idea.  I've already met my minimum and aim goals (150k and 175k).  Maybe a (partial) day of plotting will help the rest of the last week go better.
  And as I sit here thinking about it, my brain is screaming at me about my word count.  Lol..
  I'll talk to you tomorrow.

November 23, 2016

  I got another 10k yesterday.
  It feels weird to not be writing in sequence.  I'm writing by character storyline instead.  I have some good stuff and I'm looking forward to getting all organized after it's all done.  It's strange.  But there will be index cards, markers and table or bed space involved.  It'll be fun.
  I've written some new stuff.  A lot of which will be in the fourth book.  Today, I'm focusing on Daniel's timeline.  The majority of what I have written from the first draft is actually Dan's point of view.  Most of Daniel's story is in my head but not down anywhere.  New stuff.   Ooooo.
  Brise will need some new stuff too.  He's got a major storyline coming.
  Most of Norton's stuff is written, but not all.  But I don't want to focus on him today.
  My aim for today is another 10k.  That's been a pretty comfortable place to be.  I committed to a 50k weekend in one of the forums.  I don't know if I have the fortitude, though.  That almost a 17k three days in a row.  Whew.  I'm not sure my stamina is up there yet.  I'm getting kinda burned out too.  10k seems to be all I have in me right now.
  But then, I haven't done a bunch of new stuff yet.  I haven't felt that fire that burns and I HAVE to keep writing.  I'd like to feel that burn.  It's great.
  I'm off to work.  Have a good day.

November 21, 2106

  This weekend wasn't as productive as I'd liked to have been.  Both Saturday and Sunday wound up being fairly lazy days word count wise.  However, I'm not too worried about it.
  Okay, so I say that with a caveat.  On Saturday, I still got over 10k in, however, I was hoping for more.  It felt like I was dragging because I was still trying to write at 10:30 at night and I just kept allowing myself to get distracted.  Finally, I gave in to the distractions and did that instead.  I could've gotten to 12k if I hadn't.  Maybe I needed to.
  On the other hand, on Saturday, I did get all the way through Part 2 and into Part 3.  YEAH!  Party dance.  The total count right now for Part 2 is 117k, which is about 40k more than Part 1.  It's hefty.  Today, I'm debating on whether one chapter needs to be pulled back out and stuck back into Part 3.  But that decision will have to wait.
  Yesterday, I got in about 5k, which is really good considering I should've really just taken the day off.  My hubby spent a couple hours with me figuring out a technical situation with me so that something that needs to happen can.  That was important and well worth the loss of word count.
  I printed out five copies of Part 2 yesterday, four for my alphas and 1 for me.  This will be December's project.  I love how 2 is shaping up.  It's solid.  3 feels thin to me right now.  I have to remember that it's only the second draft and that's why I rewrite things so many times.
  I'm dreaming about 12k days for the rest of the month.  I don't know if that will happen or not.  I'm not feeling it today, either.  I think it's because 3 feels so thin.  When I get deeper into the meat of the story, I should get back into it.  Or maybe, I need to take a nap.  It is after lunchtime.
  Or maybe I need to get out the headphones and the music, and reread my post about how bad I want this! GAH!
  See you tomorrow.

November 18, 2016

    I got 9.5k written yesterday.  It was good.  I had been aiming for 10k, of course, but it took me until 11:45 to get where I got, so I wouldn't have gotten the rest.  It's okay.  I was over the 10k on Wednesday and I'm aiming to be over it again today.
    Part of the problem I had yesterday revolved around two chapters.  I'd written a particular scene between Daniel and a minor character, Chelsea.  When I went through Part 2 two times ago, I had decided I didn't want the scene in the book.  When I went through it again the last time, I thought that maybe it needed to be back in there, but I wasn't sure.  The events seemed so miniscule to me.
    I thought about this scene a lot yesterday.  By about seven o'clock, I realized that Daniel was going to HAVE to do this scene and it was going to require him to act in a way that's not him.  I didn't want to write it, because I didn't want Daniel to go there.
    Finally, at about ten o'clock, I decided that I'd write the chapters and if I didn't like them, I'd get rid of them.  So I did.  Wow.  I was hiding from the emotions that came out.  Holy cow.  It wound up being really good chapters.  They're going to need some adjusting because the emotion in it is so raw for me.
    This is why I write.  I love that these words can pull such an emotional response.  It's awesome.
    I'm shooting for 10k again today, but there's also a second goal.  I'm almost done getting through Part 2 and it's Friday, the 18th.  There's only twelve days left.  I need to get moving.  And, if I dot get through the rest today, I can give myself another duckie!  Part 3 tomorrow!  Woot!
    See you tomorrow.

November 17, 2016

  Even with a late start yesterday, I still clocked in over 10k last night.  I have an overall total of 107,278.  I'm on track to get to 190k-ish.
  A couple days ago, I joined with a group of other overachievers.  By being in this group, I get to see their progress as well.  It stimulates my competitive streak, on an overall and a daily basis.  There's a few people at the top that I'll never reach, but I only set my sights on the three or four right ahead of me anyway.  It's an ever-changing chart because their word counts are changing as well.  It's actually helping me to stay focused on the word counts for the day as opposed to looking at getting through so many chapters, which can become tedious.
  I'm now about 90% of the way through Part 2.  I like where the book is going.  There's still a rough spot towards the end that needs some more sanding, but I think revising will take care of that.  To me, it's interesting and has good movement.  I hope that comes across.
  I can see the light at the end of the Part 2 tunnel.  It's exciting.  I think there's three or four new chapters/pull from part 3 (one total) that needs to happen.  Whether they stay or not, I'm not sure.  I'm just questioning if one event needs to happen at the end of this book or the beginning of the next.  Sometimes, the portion has to be written in order to find that out.
  I'm aiming for at least 10k today.  There's a sports meeting for one of the kids I have to go to.  Other than that, my agenda's clear.
  Well, I need to get the dog to the dog park and then get to work.  I hope you have a good day.  See you tomorrow.

November 11, 2106

     Well, today is going to be a busy day.  I'm only practically calling for about 5k today, and hoping for close to 10k.  The 10k would be awesome.

    I wanted 12k yesterday and settled for 10.4k.  By the nine o'clock, I was brain fried.  But then, I felt pretty fired all day.  I unplugged the internet to help me out with my writing goals.  It worked until about lunchtime, when I wanted to update my word count.  Then it was downhill from there.  Facebook became a distraction a few times.  Once, it was over an hour.  That needs to stop.  It's hard, however, when your brain's on overload and you need a little dopamine boost.  It's quite convenient for that.
    So, I figured out what it would take to get through the end of Part 2 by next week.  If I average around 10k a day, with less than 1k on Sunday, I can be done by Thursday.  I'd rather be done by Tuesday, but I don't know how I'm going to pull that off.  I didn't pull the word counts the first week that I needed to in order to pull that off.
    So, I have to do it now.  Maybe if I buckled down today, I can get that 10k.  I'll have to really buckle down tomorrow, it's another jam-packed day.
    We'll take it a day at a time, I guess.

November 8, 2014

     Yesterday wound up being a good day.  About halfway through the day, I started feeling better.  At that point, I think I was about 3000 words in.  By the end of the day, at 11:45 p.m., I was over 10k for the day.  I was buzzing.  It was a good day.

     I'm looking forward to trying for that number again today.  I'll be bouncing around town.  Since I went and exercised my right to vote as an INFORMED voter, I'm treating myself to Chipotle for lunch.  I'll probably spend a couple hours there, writing.  Before I go there, however, I'm headed to one of the libraries in town so I can donate a copy of my book and write there for a while.  After lunch, I'll head to the library near my house where there's going to be a write-in this afternoon.  That'll be done at 7.  Depending on what I still need to get done, I'll either continue writing or take the evening up.  But I know me--I'll probably continue writing.

    Tomorrow is Wednesday… notorious for being uber-busy.  Having a head start going into the day would be a good thing.

    We're done with week 1.  Looking at my foundation goal, 150k, at the end of week 1 I should be at 37,500.  When I went to bed, I was at 40,241!  Woot!  For my dream goal, 240k, I needed to be at 60k.  I'm a little off.  But there's still time.

    For week 2, I'm setting my goal at 75k, half of 150k.  However, I want to be all the way through Part 2, which is between 107-115k.  I've added one chapter and I know of at least two, maybe three more that I need to do.  When I was done with the 5th draft, the manuscript sat right around 107k.  I figure three or four chapters will add at least 3k.  If I want to get through Part 3 by the end of the month, that's where I need to be next Monday.  Or at least there on next Tuesday, the 15th.  Just doubling what I did this week isn't going to work.
    So, I better get to work.  I have about 80k words to write this week.  Yikes.
    It's a good thing, though.  I'm dreaming about scenes in Part 3.  That means I need to write them.

November 7, 2016

  This weekend was not a good weekend for word count.  I was sick both Saturday and Sunday.  I had hoped to get 14,500 words written over the course of the two days, intending on doing more on Saturday and only having to make up part of the difference on Sunday.
  Nope.  My stomach decided to catch a bug.  I spent most of Saturday dragging myself around, and Sunday was spent sleeping and dragging myself around my bedroom.  Not at all what I had hoped.  I got 3173 words written over the course of the two days.  Now, that's not bad and if you're looking at just getting 50,000 words written this month, I'm just over 30,000 so I'm doing really well.
  But we all know that's not my goal.  My base goal is 150k.  My dream goal is 240k to be honest.  I'm NO WHERE near that.
  And I'm dreaming about scenes that I need to add to my rough draft for Part 3.  I'm happy with what's being rewritten in Part 2.  I yearn to get into 3.  I have to.  My sanity depends on it.  So I HAVE to get more than the 150k base.  I HAVE TO.
  So, my stomach needs to cooperate.  My head needs to stop hurting and my body needs to quit telling me to go back to bed.  I have to get this done.
  My goal today is 7,500 words by midnight.  That will get me 1/4 of the way to the 150k goal.  Since today is the end of week 1, that's a solid goal.  It's also only 250 more that my daily minimum.
  But you know I want more than that.  You know I'm going to shoot for higher... if my body and mind will let me.
  See you tomorrow.  Hopefully, I won't be brain jelly.

November 3, 2016

  Wednesday was busy yesterday like Wednesdays always are.  Still, I managed to get a little over 3000 words rewritten.  Considering the chaos that the middle of the week always brings, I think that's pretty good.
  However, that puts me behind on my word count goal for the week.  So when I just consider the weekly goal of 37,500 words (by midnight Monday, Nov 7th), I need to get 5358 words written per day.  However, when I look at the whole month and consider that I want to take Thanksgiving day and Sundays off, and I have one Saturday where the whole day is taken, I only have 25 days to write.  My overall goal for the month is 150,000 words so my daily goal should be 6000.  I think somewhere in my estimate, I figured Wednesdays would be a bugger, and my daily goal was jacked up to 7250.
  I also need to keep in mind that I'm an overachiever and I'm going to want to get through Part 3, which requires my overall word count to be up around 240,000.  Yeah... I'll have to meet my daily goals of 7250... everyday, including Wednesdays and Sundays.  That won't even get it.
  Okay, forget that.  Let's get the 7250 per day.  With that in mind, I have a buffer from Tuesday of 949 words.  In order to catch up, I need to get a total of around 10400 words.  Whew.  Okay.  I can do that, right?
  I made it through Chapter 3 yesterday.  At the 10,000 words, I think I need to get through Chapter 6 today, maybe even 7.
  That's where my sights are set.  All I can do is try my hardest.
  See you tomorrow.

October 31, 2016

  The fifth draft of part 2 will be done today!
  I can't believe I didn't post on Friday and Saturday.  Both days slipped away from me.  I've been busy, preparing for NaNo.  It starts tomorrow!  I am so ready for some creative abandon.  Whooo... shivers.
  So, this morning I got up and stayed up.  I started working on the final chapters of Part 2 right away.  I've already gotten 2600 words written, composing one chapter.  Last night, before I finally drifted off to sleep, I realized I need to pull one more chapter from Part 3 and put it in towards the end of Part 2.  It needs to happen before what occurs at the ending of Part 2.  Yeah.
  That leaves me with two more chapters.  It feels good to have this draft over with.  On draft four, I realized there needed to be a major shift of an event.  I didn't get all the way through the fourth draft before I started over.  It didn't make sense to do the extra work when this move could transform so much.  So, I haven't seen these chapters since the third draft.
  It also means I'll need to do one more draft before getting it out to my alphas.  There's been too many changes and I need to make sure it all flows and makes sense.  That's what' I'm planning to do with the first half of November, punch that out.  I had hoped to get Part 2 to the alphas by today--in my original plans--but that hasn't happened.  Oh well, a good book is more important than self-imposed deadlines.  I don't think this two week timing change is going to shift the end deadline at all.
  I'm still slated to publish Part 2 by summertime 2017.  I don't think I'll need that much time.  However, I needed two and a half more months for Part 1 than I first thought so I built in extra time in case I need it.
  So, I'm going to get back to work.  I hope your Halloween is good.
  I'll check in tomorrow, from my loft and NaNo goodness!

October 15, 2016

  Today was a good day of work.
  All I did was read.  I got the correction reading I've been doing completed.  Now to get the corrections done and upload a cleaned up version.  Like I've been saying, I feel like all I need to do now is double-check the rough spots and call the rest good.  I have made a couple non-necessary changes and I'll double-check those too.  However, the unnecessary changes outweigh the necessary ones this time.  I don't think those will ever go away.  I could read this book every month for the next ten years and still find something to tweak.
  It'll never be perfect and it's time to make the fixes and step away. :/
  I also did some editing work on the early chapters of part 2.  I still have 6-10 chapters to rewrite, toward the end.  Maybe now that I'm done with part 1, I can focus on that again.  I want to have the rewrite of part 2 done before November so I can just jump into the rewrite of part 3.  I have sixteen more days.  I can do this.
  I'm off tomorrow.  I'll be posting chapter 3 on Monday.  I hoping to publish part one (the whole week) by the end of the week!
  See you Monday!

October 7, 2016

  I'm late with my post today for one main reason:  I wanted to get the corrections done!
  Hallelujah!  I have achieved Nirvana... I think.
  Because I like numbers, here's the breakdown:
     50 Chapters, 274 pages
     Ironically, 274 total corrections therefore one per page or an average of 5.5 per chapter.

That's too high.
Phhhh.  I'm going to have to reread it.

     Necessary Changes:
        Doubled verbs - two
        Formatting -
           Dashes that I doubled but Word didn't convert - three
           Too much space inside a chapter break - two
           Soft return creating a double tab on the next line - nineteen
        Punctuation (mostly dashes, ellipses issues and adding/removing commas) -
           twenty-nine
        Capitalization (these are words that need to be capitalized in the setting of my book
           and not real life) - eleven
        General typos - sixteen
        Spelling - seventeen
        Lay vs. lie - seven
        Cot vs. bed - thirteen
        Changing words/sentences because they NEEDED changed (counting the missing five
           ending sentences of chapter 48) -  thirty-nine
        Misc. - fifteen

     Unnecessary Changes (words or sentences that didn't need fixed but sound better now):
         Changed - seventy-four
         Eliminated - seventeen
         Punctuation - ten

  I had six chapters that didn't need any changes at all!  I was so happy to have those.  There were more fixes in the front half of the book than the second half.  When I didn't find the last portion of chapter 48, I was mortified.

I am SOOO glad I bought the book proof

 

  There's too many errors to ignore the fact that I need to read it again.  Sad, but true.  But that's okay, I think.  Like I said a few posts back, this book will last longer than me.  I'm SO grateful I didn't just say "Oh, it's good.  Let's hit 'accept'."  This is embarrassing.  It would have been more so with a published book.

  I am not ordering another book proof, however.  Because of the issues with the text being wrong on the front cover, I've already made those changes and uploaded a new cover.  I ordered new proof book last week to be certain the book looked right with the fixed text and it does.  It is WAAAYYY better.  As far as the interior, I'm going to upload the cleaned up manuscript today and when they come back with the approval, I'll download a digital copy and print it off at home.  I'm going to make sure all the indents are correct, the odd page numbers are on the right hand pages, that I don't have any orphans or widows and then reread it.

  It'll be fine.

  Yesterday, I had an awesome day writing.  I got three chapters done, half of which was new material.  The chapter I wrote from scratch yesterday took off in an unexpected direction so now I'm all fired up to write again!  Yahoo!  Note:  that will mean more changes in the future and the farther I get away from this point, the farther I'll be from the draft that's already written.  Isn't writing exciting! Wahoo!

  I still need to upload stuff to CreateSpace and Smashwords so I better get to work.  Check in with you tomorrow.

October 5, 2016

  Yesterday was another productive day.  I accomplished a lot on my to-do list.
  I got ten more chapters corrected (5 of the behind ones, 5 for the day), leaving me ten behind.  I plan on getting another ten done today (like above) leaving me five behind for tomorrow.  That should catch me up.
  I got my three chapters read for corrections.  I only have eight more to go so I'm almost done with that project.  However, with as many corrections as I'm making, I can't help but feel like I should read it one more time, just maybe not as slowly.  I think I'm going to, I'll just do it as a digital copy of the proof instead of ordering yet another one.
  I got three chapters rewritten/written yesterday.  Half of it was new material.  They're smaller chapters than the ones on Monday, I only got 4000 words in.  That's still good, though.
  I'm not going to get as much done today.  I took a Benadryl last night and it hadn't worn off when the alarm went off.  So, I slept in until about nine.  I started on my day by looking in the first draft of part three for a chapter I need to pull out of it.  In order to do that, I broke the draft up into workable portions that will become chapters.  Currently, there's about 52 chapters for part 3.  However, I know there is more storyline that I haven't explored yet (that's slated for November) and I'm missing four chapters that I KNOW I wrote.  I know the general gist of those chapters so I can rewrite them, I would just like to have them for reference.  I spent most of the morning and early afternoon scouring my hard drive looking for them.  Grr.  I can't find them.
  So, today, I hope to get another ten chapters corrected, three more read and an additional four chapters rewritten.  But, seeing as how half the afternoon is gone, I doubt I'll make it.  Here's to hoping!
  See you tomorrow.

September 30, 2016

  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!

September 29, 2016

  So Wednesday has turned into this day where everything else happens, except writing.
  That's fine, other things need to happen (at least that's what I'm told) and having most of them happen in one day makes things better the rest of the week.  However, it turns Wednesday into a black hole.
  Yesterday, I got up at five and painted my daughter's face.  It was favorite band day at school and a group of her friends decided to go as Kiss.  I asked her what her favorite Kiss song was.  She had to google it.  I'm thinking they just wanted to do it because of the make-up....
  I took the dog for a walk, took a nap (because I don't do five a.m.) and then went to my volunteer job.  One son had a flag football game and another had a cross country meet.  All four had church activities last night.  My daughter had 40's day at school today so we stayed up last night and put curlers in her hair and painted her nails.  It was a fun day.
  But nothing for the book got done.  And that's just the way it is.
  The day before, I got 3500 words rewritten.  Here's the thing, I had hopes of getting through all of the Part 2 rewrite during September and into Part 3.  I still have fifteen more chapters to rewrite and that's not going to happen in a day and a half, even if I bought a whole bunch of Ramen for the kids and locked myself in my bedroom.  Anyway, if there weren't other book-related things that I was taking care of, I might have been able to do that.  I'm having trouble deciding if it's alright or not.  I have goals, by Jove.  I can't be meeting those bigger goals if I don't meet the smaller ones.
  What?  You mean I can't hole-up and be JUST a writer?  I have to be mother too?  Jeez.  Wait!  I have to be wife as well!  Holy COW!
  Bah humbug.
  Today, I'm not sure if I'm going to get to rewriting.  I have corrections to do for Part 1 and more chapters to read to add to those corrections. (I'm going to say again that I'm really thankful I got that proof book.  There were more errors in there than I realized.)
  I'm frustrated this is taking so long.  I realize the worth of being this careful, I just... grrr.  I'll be back tomorrow.

September 19, 2016

  Good morning.  It's wonderful to see you here.  Thank you for coming.
  On Saturday, I wound up getting a little over 6000 words re-written.  That's two days in a row that I got over my goal!  Yeah!  Lol.  Now, I need to do it again.
  I've gotten the big scene moved.  Everything from here on out will need some type of adjustment since this is a major change in the timeline.  I've had all of part 2 and 2/3's of part 3 rough drafted since April.  Looking forward, I can see that this shift in the timeline is going to bring me farther and farther away from what I have drafted.  I'm glad I resisted the temptation to rough draft more--although that temptation is still there.  I really enjoy the creative part of writing.  Re-writing is necessary, but it's mundane because I've already figured that out.  Lol.
  There's a huge sucking hole since I moved that section.  It was important to move it, I'm positive of that.  I'm going to have to pull from what I've written in part 3 to fill the hole.  I don't see that as a big problem, just not what I had originally planned for the book.  That's okay.  That's what re-writing is for and the book will be better because of it.
  Wish me luck.
  See you tomorrow.