3rd Draft Complete!

75k, five months (September through March, not including November and half of December and January) And this is the last rewrite. Not it's just editing and tweaking and tightening and the fiddly bits.

And just in time for Camp. *relief*

More later. Knackered now.

Good luck to everyone doing Camp!

Self-Induced Deadlines

The problem with self-induced deadlines is that you feel shitty when you don't hit them.

The good thing about self-induced deadlines is that you feel shitty when don't hit them which makes you bloody well hit them. 

I'm a couple of thousand words away from The End.

I am procrastinating.

But I've said, loudly and often, that I'm Finishing My Book Today. So I will. So there. I can't stop me. 

This is what I'm listening to repeat all day -- 'Feel the Light' by Jennifer Lopez from the Home soundtrack. Brilliant, perfect song. 

I guess I should probably go do those words. 

Guess How Much I Don't Want to Write Today

Yesterday was brilliant. I wrote 2k in half the time it usually takes me and I finally untangled the last few knots in this enormous ball of wool that's my novel. I went to bed on a high, ready to tackle the next bit today.

Guess how much I don't want to write today?

What made sense yesterday seems ridiculous this morning. 

My writing is shitty, filled with adverbs and adjectives and waaaay too self-conscious.

Coming to the end, my wife expressed her excitment about getting out her red pen to whip it into shape and, when I muttered something about 'no way' and 'not yet', an incredulous 'But this is the third draft!"

And I think that's it.

It's the third bleedin' draft. It should be better than this. I should be better than this. and yesterday I thought I was, but today it's as though I've gone fifty steps backwards. I don't want anyone to see how much I haven't improved and what a waste of time it's all been. 

I'm being silly. I know that in a hour or a day I'll be on top of the world again; I know what needs improvement and changing and how to make it better, but UGH! It's hard not to ket the 'no' days consume me. I can't wait 'til it's done and in a drawer for two months, and then I can come at it with fresh eyes and an unclogged mind. 

Nearly there. 

March Catch-Up

Well, March has certainly been a productive month so far!

Just hit 60k on my WIP, and it's really starting to take shape. I have a good idea what I need to do in the next draft and I'm fairly confident that, after that, it'll just be a matter of tweaking. I don't think I'll have quite finished by April, but it'll just be a matter of a couple of scenes left if not.

Got married on Wednesday (will do a longer post about that when I get the photos back!) now we're recognised everywhere as properly, legally, wifes ^^ Finally!! But yes, more about that later :)

Finally got sorted into my Camp Cabin and, well, it's just about perfect. Most people I've been chatting to for a fair while, and there're a couple of new faces too. Our word-count goals range from 30k to 350k, and everyone's psyching each other up to push themselves -- which is exactly why I wanted to be in an OA cabin in the first place. It's an inspiring group to be a part of! Ironally, OAs have proven to be the most open and the most accepting group of people on NaNo -- they know that anything's possible if only you have the courage to try, and the word count themselves rarely come into it at all. It's much more an attitude than a word-count thing.

So yes, all good things! Having a break from paper work and visa thoughts before we change the visa into a green-card (I don't even want to think about how much that's going to cost -_-) But everything's looking up!