Oops, I Did It Again...

 I overplanned.

Couldn't keep up.

Okay, enough of that. (But if you didn't hear the song while you read that, I'm a little disappointed.)

So this past week was supposed to be crazy productive, right? I had originally planned to dig straight into STILL FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM, but ended up deciding not to start writing until FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM is 100% complete and ready to set aside, which meant I needed more editing in order to polish and get the story into the hands of my beta team.

The text file for FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM was 221 pages long and closing in on 140 thousand words, so I filled my planner for the week with editing goals; I went into editing week planning to work my way backwards through the file (so as not to get caught up in the story because you guys, it's SO good and I'm SO proud of it) paragraph by paragraph, and shave about 30 thousand useless words off that bad boy, with a target of 110 thousand words before I call it finished and send it to the betas. So 220 pages divided by my six-day writing week came to a whopping 60 pages a day.

"Cool, I got this."

Except, I totally didn't. By Monday afternoon, I had recalculated to 40 pages and accepted that there was no way I could do this in one week - but I barely made it through 20 pages Monday because I care about this book. I spent time on each paragraph, each page, meticulously rewording things, removing unnecessary bits, and shaving things down. The thing is, it takes approximately forever to do it that way. But I'm slogging through because it matters.

Currently, I'm on page 164 of this massive file (which, if you remember the backwards part, means I still have 164 pages to go), and have gotten down to just below 127 thousand words. I still have a long way to go, but I am insanely excited about this rewrite. I've said before, I was proud of this book when I first wrote it, but oh my goodness, the growth. Even in editing, which is just short of miserable, I am in love with everything about this story.

So I guess I'd better get back to it, because the sooner I finish this one, the sooner we move to the next phase of my plan, the sooner I get to make a new plan.

Unless I die of excitement, which is beginning to look like a very real possibility. In the meantime, my house is still cluttered. Whatever, I'm human. How's your week going?