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.
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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

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.