Schedule

Woohoo!

| rachelhamm

I’m two days ahead of schedule!

I just finished the rewrites of my last chapter and the epilogue to Twenty-Five. I wasn’t supposed to be finished with those until Monday!  So I guess my lack of social life pays off every once and a while.

Now that I’ve finished the bulk of the rewriting, I’m going to start early on the minor edits of grammar and typos and suggestions from reviewers.

The big problem, though, with my rewrite is that now my book is WAY TOO LONG!  I meant to shorten it on the rewrite but ended up increasing the length by about 4000 words!  So now I’m probably going to need to do some major chopping, which sucks, because I already cut out a lot of stuff that I loved.

The editing process is never done!

Kicking Ass

| rachelhamm

Yes, that’s right.  I’m kicking my Rewrite Schedule’s ass all over the place!!!

Not only have I not missed a single day, but I’ve actually managed to add in two chapters I didn’t realize I needed when I made the schedule.  If you notice, the title went from 23 Chapters in 15 Days to 24 Chapters in 15 Days to 25 Chapters in 15 Days. Now, as long as I keep my momentum up I should be finished with my second draft on time.  I have to write a completely new chapter today, but it’s almost finished.

I love hand-writing.  I prefer it to typing.  It’s a better rough draft because I can scratch things out and still see what my original idea was.  Plus, when I go to type it I can fix all the little mistakes I made when writing it originally.  So it’s like a first draft of my first draft.  And I find my words flow more easily when I have a pen in my hand then when I’m at a keyboard.  Go figure.

If I finish my second draft on time, then I will be starting NANO on November 1st with no hesitation.  I will also be starting a new goal for Twenty-Five: to query at least ONE agent every day during the month of November.  That includes Thanksgiving Day.  But, I may do that one a day or two early.  I heart Thanksgiving, so much.

So if anyone knows any agents looking for a heart-wrenching/warming love story, let me know!  If I get this book published, I might just die of happiness.

Quick Update

| rachelhamm

I’ll try and write something profound tomorrow, but it’s 1:46 am right now and I JUST finished my chapters for today.

Whew!

I finished yesterday’s chapters on schedule, too!  So far so good.  Now I just have to keep up the momentum.

Editing/ rewriting is both one of the hardest and one of the easiest parts of writing.  Easiest because I already know my characters.  I already know the outcome of the story.  I already know how to get them from Point A to Point B.  Hardest because now I have to make it believable.  Making it believable, tweaking those parts which just didn’t work the first time around, incorporating advice from readers- is a BITCH.  A big, fat, ugly bitch who’s in your face, talking about your mama and spitting her disgusting garlic breath all over your face.  (Is it okay to say “bitch” in a blog?  If not, forgive me!)

And I want to do thirteen straight more days of this??  Have I lost my mind?

Probably.  But if I did, it was long before I took this project on!

Happy reading, happy writing, and sweet dreams…

25 Chapters in 15 Days

| rachelhamm

Okay.  So NANO (National Novel Writing Month) begins on November 1.  That means there are 15 days (counting today) to prepare for the Novel-in-a-Month challenge.

No sweat, right?

Um, not exactly.  You see, I want to have the second draft of my novel, Twenty-Five, finished before I begin working on any other projects.  And NANO is definitely a project.  In order to finish my second draft I have to edit, rewrite, or write from scratch 25 chapters and polish up the 23 chapters I’ve already edited/rewritten.

Holy Shit!

25 chapters in 15 days is probably the most ambitious goal I’ve had for myself since I started writing back in March.  And it means that I may neglect some of my friends whose work I try and review on a regular basis.  But what other option do I have?  It’s only two weeks and then I’ll be back to reviewing like normal, plus writing a 50,000 word novel!

I’m going to make a schedule and it is up to YOU to hold me accountable!

Today, Saturday October 17: Chapters 24-25

Sunday, October 18 (I have the day off!!): Chapters 26-30

Monday, October 19: Chapter 31-32

Tuesday, October 20: Chapter 33

Wednesday, October 21 (Another day off!): Chapter 34-39

Thursday, October 22: Chapter 40

Friday, October 23 (Day off, yippee!): Chapter 41-45

Saturday, October 24: Chapter 46

Sunday, October 25: Chapter 47

Monday, October 26: Chapter 48, Epilogue

Tuesday, October 27: Grammar, spelling, suggestions from reviewers edit of chapters 1-10

Wednesday, October 28: Grammar, spelling, suggestions from reviewers edit of chapters 11-20

Thursday, October 29: Grammar, spelling, suggestions from reviewers edit of chapters 21-30

Friday, October 30: Grammar, spelling, suggestions from reviewers edit of chapters 31-40

Saturday, October 31: Grammar, spelling, suggestions from reviewers edit of chapters 41-Epilogue

My 15 days of major rewriting starts right NOW!