Halfway There

The first half of the book is DONE! It is done and ready to be sent to my editor. How did that happen, you ask? I'd be happy to tell you.

I've never written a novel before, so basically I'm tripping through, using all the resources I can reasonably get my hands on to guide me through the process. And the process has been hit-or-miss. Sometimes I get really consistent and make a ton of progress and then...I won't touch the project for a month.

That's a problem.

When I'm working on the book consistently it all flows smoothly (mostly) and I really enjoy the book itself and the process of creating it. But all it takes is an extended break and wow! it is hard to get back in once I've lost momentum. I recently had a very focused week on the book and I wanted to keep that going. 

So I vlogged about it.

This approach was designed to achieve two things:

1. To test out a different way of creating vlog-style videos after some recent missteps.

2. To keep me accountable to work on the book because I was going to have to report my progress on camera.

It worked! My original intent had been to dig deep for a week, but then I got hammered with a nasty cold that chose never to go away. I'm barely camera-worthy when I'm healthy, there was no way I was getting out the camera in the state I was in. But I did work diligently on the book and salvaged enough to make a video.

Polishing up the first half wasn't as hard as I expected and really should have taken a lot less time. (Focus Michelle!) At least two chapters needed no work at all and the things I needed to clean up in the others were pretty straight-forward once I actually gave them some attention. Oh! And an abandoned storyline is back! I'm really pleased with how things ended up.

What's next? The second half.

My original plan had been to replicate what I did with the first half - print it up, mark it up with all the red ink, and make the edits. Instead, I'm going to write through the second half one more time to make sure I'm weaving in the changes I made in the first half. Then I'll print, mark up, and make edits.

Despite feeling like trash for 13 DAYS I'm really happy with the progress I've made and I'm excited to keep it going. These are the phases of novel writing that are fun. Let's keep it going...

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