End in Sight!

Main Goal: To be done with this draft of Ivory. I want it to be reader ready by the 25th. (That's when hubby starts vacation, and I know I won't get much done with him home.)

How much do I have left? *calculates*

A lot.

What started as a 99,244 word novel right after NaNoWriMo 2008, ended up as a 94,876 second draft. Not a big difference. As it stands right now with the in-progress third draft, it's at approximately 80,000 words. Short for a fantasy novel.

I'm at 2nd draft chapter 11, third draft chapter 5. What was about 25,000 words, is now a little over 10,000. I had a ton of info dumping. I know what's left is good, and the rest of the novel is info dump free minus one chapter.

I'm also the point where I stopped fixing the tense my first time through. Gonna be a pain in my butt. At least my POV has stayed steady.

I'm never changing tense on a completed novel again. NEVER.

Oh well. It's my first complete novel. It has been a total learning experience, and I don't regret it. And I'm going to finish it all the way. No giving up just because I don't think it will sell. I didn't write it to sell it. I wrote it because it was a story in my head that wanted to be told.

TGIAF

...Thank God It's Almost Friday. :D

Our extended house guests are gone. Though our garage is still full of their stuff.

I'm loving where Ivory is going. It's taken a different direction, just with tiny changes. I think I managed to change the whole feel of the story, and I like it. :D I cut out useless filler characters, tightened up the subplot, and made my MC seem real rather than a cardboard cutout.

We'll see how it comes out in the end. I've been trying to get 5 chapters done a week. I've lost quite a few scenes and chapters to the knife, right now I have 22 I believe. (Reminder: this was my first NaNoWriMo novel, first novel ever, the first draft I had to work with was...Crap. Scenes out of order, characters with the wrong names and five million 'it is' rather than 'it's' for word count purposes.)

I know most of it was due to inexperience, I had a couple chapters with one scene, a few with way too many. I've been trying to combine the scenes into 4 chapter chunks. So far it's working, the chapter ending is usually a good break spot. Makes me happy! It's finally coming together and making sense.

I'm trying to have this done by the 24th because my husband starts leave on the 25th. We're actually taking a mini vacation this year! Rented a cabin down south a bit. It's going to be so much fun.

It's odd. We've traveled so much, but this will be the first vacation for us. We always go see family and that usually comes with stress and drama.

I get sidetracked so easily...

Off to get some writing done! I'm not letting the mess in my kitchen derail me. It can stay messy for now, it won't hurt it.

Have a great day everyone!

To Start Over or Not Start Over

Status: Excited because we're moving soon! (About a week away!)

I've finally figured out that I need to do a complete plot overhaul on Ivory. I'm going to start the awesome poster board type method this weekend to hopefully accomplish just that.

Do I want to keep going with the line edits I've done? I'm thinking I should do this plot overhaul, then redo the line edits, as the last half of the novel is worse than the first half in terms of plot.

I don't like the idea of starting over, but I really think that may the best thing to do. Get the novel in good shape, then worry about checking for silly mistakes. Looks like I started this process backwards.

Hopefully with my decision to edit for grammar as I write will help me a ton when it comes time to edit my next novel. I want to avoid this crap altogether.

Any of you scrap edits and start over because you realized you've been doing it wrong? (Not necessarily a bad method, just one that wasn't working for you.)

Thanks for stopping by!

Relaxing with OCD

Status: Tired and hungry.

We're moving in a week and a half. We have a ton of boxes packed finally. It feels like we have so much more to do, but not really. The biggest thing is we have to clean the apartment. Can't really do a full cleaning with all this stuff in it.

The half-packed apartment isn't helping my stress level. OCD and messes don't generally get along. I'm not bad, I just like things to be tidy. I don't flip out if my husband drops his clothes on the floor, or doesn't scrap his plate. Doesn't bug me. But if the entire house is 'messy' for an extended period of time, it starts to get under my skin and drive me bonkers.

I know this, so I try to prevent it. Right now, my kitchen counters are clean and the dishes are done. When I start to feel overwhelmed, I simply look at my kitchen and soak in the tidiness. It relaxes me.

The act of cleaning doesn't relax me, the end result does.

The key to a more relaxing life for me seems to be to clean more. Weird. Do chores to relax. hehe.

Side Note: Got five pages of Ivory done today! And about 1,000 new words, found another mini hole. I'm also going to start bubbling that new idea I got the other day. Yes, bubbling. I'm a big fan of bubble webs. I know there's another name. You start with one bubble with a word or phrase and then spider outwards with other bubbles.


My favorite word is fickle. What's yours?