Review-Preview and ROW80 Update

Phew, this was an interesting week. Thursday's post about the slush pile went viral (slightly) and I had a lot of interaction with various folks because of it. Let's see if this Thursday's post lives up to that.

Upcoming Posts:

This week, just the minimum three while I scramble to finish this book:

• Monday: An excerpt from the WIP: The Man Who Did Too Much.
• Wednesday: ROW80 Update
• Thursday: Do Indie Writers Need Editors?

I'd like to expand quite a lot on the subjects of Editors, Writing Quality, and Artisan Writers, but I really can't do much more than once a week on it for now.

A Round of Words in 80 Days Challenge Update: Did I finish the book?

Well, gosh if I didn't sorta do it!

Sorta.

I didn't think I had. There is way too much work to be done to make it readable. Scenes that switch locations in the middle, other scenes which were written so early in the process that they need to be completely rewritten.... but now that I have all the little pieces in place, I find that it's all actually there. Except for one or two little factual scenes.

But there is still a lot of work to do to roll those lumps into a smooth whole. But in celebration of getting this far, I am posting an excerpt from the WIP on Monday. It's a page chosen at random (though I allowed myself to waffle on the exact start and end point).

Wednesday Day 38 - 0 minutes. Usual day off.

Thursday Day 39 - 128 minutes. Yes, I met my goal. No, I'm not happy about it. I had some good material going in my head the day before -- I had gone to bed with all sorts of ideas, which I had to keep sitting up to take notes on.

But then I woke up with a cold -- and not an ordinary sneezing and sniffling cold, but one where the various parts of my sinuses take turns feeling bloated and raw. It always makes me feel like my brain is swollen. So it was very hard to hold more than one thought in my head at a time, and though I got two hours in, they were not my most productive two hours. Fizbuttle!

Friday Day 40 - 155 minutes. The cold turned out to be of the 24-hour variety and I was able to get back to productive work. So today I took a fun but dorky scene and made it less dorky while trying to maintain the fun. I succeeded.

This is the halfway point in the challenge. I am happy that I did meet and exceed the dare goals, but and I am much behind where I want to be on the book.

Saturday Day 41 - 161 minutes. I spent most of today beating out the remaining scenes, and getting them in the right order. I have a couple of small factual scenes to write, and the emotional resonance of one scene to deal with. But the rest is all timing, transitions, and factual matters.

I really should document the work I'm doing on transitions, so I can post about it on the Spoilers Blog later. A lot of interesting issues cropping up in deciding where to cut away from one point of view to another, and where to have chapter breaks. Balancing cliff-hangers and natural/logical progression, and revelations.

Goal For The Coming Week:

I'm going to continue the 720 minutes goal for this week, at least until the darned thing is done. Which really had better by next Sunday, is all I can say.

See you int he funny papers.