It’s the XXX part that’s going to get me all the spambots shortly ;).
Bloodshifted is done! This is the fastest I’ve ever written a first draft I think — four months? But there were some serious diversions into other projects there for a bit, which really dipped into writing time. This is also the fewest drafts I’ve ever done of anything ever in my life ever. Usually my books get up to 7-15 revs, which I retitle the word.doc after each major change, but this time there’s only 2. That’s right, just twooooo versions.
How on earth did I do that? Well, I let go of a lot more stuff this time around. I felt much more free to put my place-holder XXX in where ever I knew I’d need to go back and choose a character’s name, fix geography, flesh out a scene, or indeed even put a scene in, there’s a ton of “xxx emotional beat” placeholders in the current text.
There’s 224 of XXX’s to be replaced, in fact. Which is why I’m pretty confident that going into the second draft, and rev 3, will add 15k of text to the book, no problem. And I’m fine with that :D. What counts is that the bones are down right now and the plot flows — the action parts are so actiony, and the emotional stuff is super emotional — I almost wish I could keep rolling on and write the next book!
But I’ve got a long weekend at work coming up (complete with holiday pay, yo) so I’ll be taking a short break, and then restarting in from the beginning, now knowing everything I need to juggle for the end. I was melancholy about finishing this whole evening, but now I’m really excited about going back and starting in again :D.
And oh, yeah, Shapeshifted is coming out less than two weeks from now! *facepalm* I almost forgot, ha! Deep calming breaths, Cassie, it’ll all get done! ;)
Woo hoo! Good for you. I am so glad to hear someone else uses placeholders too. My writing time has been way limited—why did I think working a 1.0 was a good idea again? Oh yeah, it let me move to day shift, lol. Fine. Anyway, if I only have time for about 500 words a day (if I’m lucky), then they have to count and move the story. So, there are lot of little comments to the side like, “So what does ‘looks puzzled’ actually look like on him?” or “synonym” when I know I’ve been using a particular word too frequently, but don’t want to deal with picking another just yet.
I might steal the “XXX” though, if for no other reason than I’d giggle a little every time I put it down.
Oh totally! It’s the only way to stay sane. I suck at blocking the first time through, so it’s a lot easier to just put “xxx moves into room” and then layer in why and what they’re looking at later. I feel so badly for the people who have to get everything right the first time through, that would drive me insane.