SF Novel Second Draft Update C14 Stalled
No progress. I’m stalled again. It’s unbelievabley frustrating to be stalled so close to the end. Hopefully I’ll get over it soon. One long burst of activity would finish the damn thing.
No progress. I’m stalled again. It’s unbelievabley frustrating to be stalled so close to the end. Hopefully I’ll get over it soon. One long burst of activity would finish the damn thing.
Little progress tonight, despite the word count. The chasm between “writing” and “not writing” as states feels like it’s widening, making it harder to go from one ot the other. It was like that at the start, and when I got stalled in the middle. I have to assume that will is what it takes to flip the switch, but an inadequate explanation of the concept of will has always undermined the usefulness of that assumption.
Word count: 72034
Paraphrased from an episode of The Wire I watched earlier (when I should have been editing): “Make your number, or die in this room.” For tonight, at least, I made my number.
Word count: 69259
Thirteen doesn’t appear to be lucky today. Not that much to do, but it’s currently beyond me.
I think I can see the finish line.
Word count: 63926
Obviously, I didn’t finish the second draft in November. I didn’t manage it by the end of this weekend, either. I’m close. Very close, probably about six thousand words of writing away, which isn’t too bad given the target of eighty thousand.
I’m disappointed that I didn’t finish it today (or Friday, but an extra weekend wasn’t too bad). I’ll try to finish it tomorrow, but it looks unlikely, unless I get some serious inspiration for what those six thousand words should be… the end of the first draft is a little more sparse than I had thought. I need about an extra thousand words for Chapter Thirteen, and an extra two-and-a-half thousand each for Fourteen and Fifteen. Certainly doable, but not tonight.
Four to go.
Word count: 58594
Done. Five to go.
Word count: 53262
Another long day. So I fail to hit my target of the end of the month, but I’m still going to aim for the end of the weekend. Finishing the second draft only two days behind schedule would still make me rather happy.
Long, long day at work today. So I didn’t have the chance to edit. I did look over the chapters, and it looks tough to get six done tomorrow… Chapter 10 itself doesn’t look too bad, I think it’ll be easy to cut down. Chapter 11 will probably be harder. Chapter 12 might well be the toughest left, because the current material for it is extremely sparse. I think 13 and 14 will be easier, and then 15, because it’s the end, will probably be hard (although I do not plan any major changes to the ending at this point).
That was difficult. And now I have six chapters to do in two days. That looks both very tough and quite achievable.
Word count: 47930
The chapters from my first draft are extremely uneven in terms of length (and in other ways, too). Going through them and trying to make them more uniform requires switching between doing a lot of cutting and doing a lot of new writing, more of the latter than I had expected. So I’m still far away, but I haven’t given up hope of getting there before Saturday.
Word count: 45630
That took a lot longer than I’d hoped. Finally past the halfway point. With four days left in the month, I have seven chapters to go. I might need some of this weekend to do it.
Word count: 42598
I cut over 10,000 words today, but the last 3,000 or so in this chapter are proving difficult. Progress this weekend was rather slow.
Working my way through it. I don’t have a solid word count for the finished part yet. Hopefully I can get it and a few more chapters done tomorrow…
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