Tuesday, August 11, 2009

The Big Push

I just finished a 10-day writing marathon while the rest of the family was out of town. I kept this time free of social obligations, took a little time off work and crammed in as much writing in as I could.

My goal was to have the second draft done and the book ready to distribute to 1st readers.

It was a smashing success, though I did not get quite as far as I had hoped. Probably a month of normal paced work left before it is reader ready (30% to scrub, and a final read-through).

During the Big Push, I managed to get in two months worth of work. Let me caveat that -- between family and the day job, I have very limited time to write, so my ‘month’ is about what a full time writer can do in a week.

Anyway, reached the end and did a rolling edit going backward, section by section, fixing anything that was broken and performing sentence level edits. Made it through 4 of 7 sections, including the middle section which is 3x as long as most of the others. This leaves 3 sections to edit, a start to finish proofread, then it will be ready to go out.

After getting feedback, I expect there will be one more draft before I begin marketing the novel, but the Big Push has brought me two months closer to that goal in just over a week.

Hurray!

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