Okay, so i’m really at 48,700 words in the 2nd draft, but 50k is just around the corner, only i’ll be at work this weekend and unable to update here what with the working and the sleeping, so i’m celebrating early ;).
I feel really good about the vast majority of what i’ve done so far. I have all next week off, so I think I really can get to the end of the book by the end of Feb. Then I’ll have all of March for a good 3rd draft. Book 1 edits are still coming down the pipe, too — I’m hoping beyond hope that they are very minimal, and also they don’t change anything I’m writing in now. (How could they? Right? Right?! *cue manic laughter*)
It’s been an interesting transition these past few days. Weeks, really. Like some days, i won’t feel like writing, but “Zomg, i have to, deadlines!” And then other times i feel like i’m falling behind, and that is just awful, too. When i was in a particularly difficult part recently, I was having fierce nightmares, all stress related — my childhood sanctuary was being flooded, I was lost in a city without directions and it was dark, I drove my car into the ocean and was drowning, spiders were running away from me (spiders love me in dreams), and one charming morning i woke up and took my bite guard out and it was full of blood. I carry my stress in my jaw, heh.
What’s funny to see too is how my brain betrays me. I can spend two days knitting together things I already wrote, and it’s all, “Man, if only we were writing new stuff right now. That would be so awesome. I love writing new stuff.” And then voila, the next day, I have to come up with the next three scenes, and my brain’s all, “Waitaminute. Surely, surely, we already wrote some of this somewhere else. How about we go look in the note file again, eh?”
In what might dismay other people, but is for me How I Work, tonight I saw that my note file, which is all notes relating to and text discarded from the main text — is just ten k shorter than my keeper file. Yaaaay, overwriting!
It’s good that i’ve done this before, for other books, so that i know the solution is just to keep on keeping on. It’s also good for me to realize that every time i sit down, even if it’s for a period that i think is minimal — 15 mins before going out to dinner, or something — or any time i don’t feel like it, i do worthwhile work, regardless. It’s just all about staying in the chair.
But i’ve been in this chair enough for tonight, already ;). See y’all on Monday, most like.
I use Scrivener for my writing and I have a custom template that contains a folder called “deleted scenes”. When I over-write, or when I cut something, rather than delete it forever, I move it to the “Delete scenes” folder for that project. It makes me feel much better, especially if I like what I’m cutting but can’t use it. But it also serves another purpose: learning how much I improve over time. It’s fun to go back through those old deleted scenes and not only think, “Thank goodness I got rid of that!” but also, “Wow, I sure have improved since writing that one.”