Seat Time

This past week has been a tough one for seat time, with many major distractions pulling me away from my writing. These included finishing the taxes and a new baby in the family (not mine!). I did get some quality work done, but not as much as I had hoped.

I edited the past few chapters again, something I just can't stop doing, probably since it's the way I've been working throughout this entire draft and with good results. It's just been slow, at times too slow and too tedious. I've tried rushing forward but that's not working, either.

The good news is I'm much happier with the past few chapters. One in particular had never satisfied me; I think I can say now it's not nearly as bad as I had thought it was. The editing has focused the conflict and strengthened the sense of how and why things matter to individual characters. And, I'm through that really rough spot in the plot that had tied me up for so long. The word count has grown to 31k on top of the editing work. A meager step forward, but it's very solid progress.

This coming week I'll shoot again for 10k words, and more if I can to help me catch up. It's still possible to complete this draft within April. I know if I do race ahead the quality will go down and I'll have more editing to do later. The only thing that matters, of course, if finishing this manuscript and getting it out the door -- however that happens is fine with me.

I have a larger time line I'm working against, which currently calls for me to finish the first draft in April then spend two months editing, with the finished product ready to mail out by July 1st. With all the editing I've done thus far on this draft, there isn't much more to do with the existing chapters except polish them.

I'm excited whenever I think I'll finally have something ready to send out! And I want to follow it with more stories on a regular basis. All I need is more seat time. I've enjoyed using the Cool Timer (see "Resources" in the sidebar). I don't always need it, but using it gives me an extra push, a sense of urgency.

Wishing everyone else all the seat time they need this week,

Adrian