This is it! The final day of (first round) rewrites! Some more stats, just for fun: The rewrites took only about a tenth of of total time spent so far, but accounted for a little under a quarter of hours spent. As it turns out, it’s easier to press through already-written material than it is to come up with the stuff. Would have taken less time if I hadn’t changed the tense for the last third and had to completely switch it back in rewrites, but at least I didn’t choose to switch the first 2/3 instead! Also, the first five chapters are most heavily rewritten, since I went over them several times. The rest is scanned for accuracy, clarity, consistency and story arc or plot; major reductions were achieved by nixing whole character development arcs and secondary plot lines, but relatively little was done to core people and arcs. Which means, at least in my own mind, the thing was actually written in a coherent, forward-moving fashion. Neat! Total reductions of over 10K words due to the scrapped threads/people, but another few thousand words written to flesh things out, finishing in the 95K word range, which is actually pretty on target. I could see things growing quite a bit in next round rewrites though… So many things to clarify!
Second beta reader’s edition goes out today, with (I flatter myself to think) a significantly better cover variant. Only have feedback from two readers so far, though (thanks, family!) on the first five chapters, and no real plan for moving forward. I’d like to dive into rewrites round two, but with my relocation looming, there are some other errands I really need to get to - trip planning, packing, paperwork-settling and portfolio/job applications come to mind… so Day 120 may not come for a couple months. We’ll see. I do need to sink several hours into prepping cover variants and beta reader editions for the remaining chapters, queueing posts for Tumblr and blogging to my site before full traveling starts in August, but I think I’ll be able to fit in at least a bit of that in London.
On the social media front, small progress: the new cover variant got decent likes (like, more than 10, lol) and one tumblr kid/writer asked a question, so small victories! My existence is being recognized! SOOO much work to do still, but small steps. At least my Klout score keeps climbing (incrementally - now at 53!)
Friday
Start time: 3:15 pm
Location: couch/living room
Drinking: Martini Rosso, Rhubarb Cordial & mixed cold tea