Too tired. Since there are only seven days left in the month, I need to do two chapters tomorrow and one per day thereafter. Tough but possible. Starting the editing process earlier in the day would probably help a great deal.

Moving along…
Word count: 37266

But the need for sleep won out.
Word count: 32033

I edited all of Chapter Six today, which catches me up one day. If I keep up that pace, I’ll manage to get the remaining nine chapters done this month.
Word count: 32033

Done. At last. Just ten more chapters to go…
Word count: 26701

Needed a break even from trying.

More slow going. On another note, reading good science fiction (in this case Blindsight by Peter Watts) while editing/writing this is somewhat demoralizing. But if I’m ever going to get to the point of writing good stuff myself, I need practice.
Word count: 26120

Really slow. Need more sleep.
Word count: 25976

Better than no progress, naturally.
Word count: 25865

Bah. Still not giving up though. Feel like I should be able to get some traction tomorrow.

Stalled, but I’m not giving up yet. I still intend to get it done by the end of the month.

I’m still behind, but I haven’t stopped. Chapter five is slowly being fleshed out.
Word count: 25414

Bad time management really doesn’t make catching up any easier. I’m still behind. I should find time to watch this lecture on time management by Randy Pausch. One of the things I did catch while skimming it was that bad time management causes stress—I think I have empirical data confirming this hypothesis.

Terrible time management and needing to do a lot of new writing caught up with me tonight. I haven’t finished Chapter Five, and so I need to play catchup tomorrow (and, possibly, thereafter).
Word count: 24610.

Toughest section so far, writing much of the first half of chapter five from scratch.
Word count: 24035.

More major surgery, and chapter four is finished.
Word count: 21368.

Slogging through the bloat.
Word count: 18701.

End of chapter three. I had to add a few hundred words this time, which I suspect means that I’ve divided some of the sections up incorrectly… but we’ll see. The bulk of the bloat for this part of the draft remains to be tackled over the next chapter.
Word count: 16035.

Harder going, but it’s still going.
Word count: 13368.

I’m done with the second chapter, and done with the easy parts. The next two chapters are based on material that I’ve already edited heavily, but it’s a great deal messier than the material for the first two was. I know it’s going to be difficult to chop it down and keep it coherent.
Word count: 10702.

Halfway through chapter two, Lee escorting Lawrenceson. Lots of trimming sentences and paragraphs down, and removing pieces that seem extraneous. The worry is always that something valuable will be lost, but I think first of the fact that I can add things back if they’re completely critical, and second of the dictum that a work is finished not when there’s nothing left to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away.
Word count: 8036.

I’m still in the comparatively easy part. I’ve worked on the beginning of the novel the most, since I’ve started the editing process many times. So the first few chapters, just over the first week of this process, involve working on material that’s already got some good structure and that’s been edited down from the sprawling first draft. And now the first chapter is done.
Word count: 5334.

November is NaNoWriMo. I already have a novel, or at least somewhere between 180,000 and 200,000 words of something that could be a novel if you looked at it funny. Last year I wrote a microversion of it in September. That did spur me to work on it more, but I never managed to find a rhythm that would let me finish it. So, given that the approach of a target every day seems to work for me, I’ve decided that this will be Tadhg Novel Editing Month.
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