In the home stretch

I’ve been writing a lot since I last posted.  Something like 30k or so.  My drop-dead deadline is April 1st to get it to my Turtleduck Press editor.  And that is a polished, publication-ready manuscript…not the mess it is currently.

The first half of the book needs to match the second half.  I changed quite a few things.  And it needs some smoothing.  That’s the only problem with completely pantsing it (that is, writing without an outline) — you end up with a lot of things to rewrite or clean up.  But it works.  I haven’t written a book this fast in a long, long time.  And the kicker is that I haven’t written down any of my plans.  I’ve let things happen organically.  I’ve followed my muse wherever she’s led me, and I believe the finished product will be awesome for it.

I’ve had a few setbacks, though, like migraines and wrist issues.  I’ve been careful, but unfortunately, my left wrist is soooo sensitive.  So I’ve been taking care not to overdo it.  And if I do, I usually skip the next day’s writing session to compensate.

My original goal was to have the draft done by mid-month.  That’s not happening.  The draft is at 108k now, and I anticipate at least another 5k to wrap things up.  I’ll be cutting some things so I hope to have it end up around 100k when I’m done.

My new deadline is to finish the draft this weekend, but I’m not sure if I can do it.  I’ll try like hell, though, because that will give me more time to revise, edit, and polish.

I also have decided on book 2, both the name (Grave Touched) and the main “problem.”   So that’s good.  I’m not sure what I’ll be doing in between edits, but I’ve considered starting book 2.

I also wanted to get some work done on the Flamebound revision and the Survivor Rewrite.

Recently, I sat down and put all the Survivor files together into a master document.  Then I can just move stuff around, cut, add, etc.  It came in at around 300k and 800+ pages!  This will be a big job, but I want to try to get it traditionally published.  Same with Flamebound.  We’ll see how it all shakes out.

So. Back to writing.