Challenge 44: Charging Ahead

After declaring my 44 days challenge few weeks ago, time to post a little update.

It's definitely going well. As I said previously, this is just one pass of revision so I am not aiming for perfect. Main thing is to make sure all the plot changes are made, the new plot layer added and weaved throughout the story lines, and scenes that need changing as a result of it are changed. So far I have done the easy bit, as the new plot layer doesn't need adding until middle of the book, so there weren't too many major changes in the beginning and just one new scene to add - which did take a while, because it's always difficult adding things in already finished story.

However, currently I am ahead of schedule. I am trying to pull ahead now, because I know that once I get to the middle - in about a scene or two - and have to start writing new material, it will take much longer, and might even make it harder to meet daily goals, so the better I do now, the more time I have.

Also, instead of 44 days, now I want to complete this challenge in 39 days, which would be 30th of April. Since it's end of the month, makes a neater ending. That's my ideal plan, and one I am aiming for, but it all depends on how things go.

This challenge has certainly proven, yet again, that short term fixed goals do work for me. NaNo was a success, and this challenge so far has proven more productive than last two months put together. So this is the kind of format I plan to use in the future for all writing/editing goals. It also, to a certain extent, enables me to work on one thing at a time, which is good for me, because flitting about all over the place is not as productive as focusing on one thing at a time (and I am the queen of multi-tasking so when I say it, I mean it).

For me, it is also more important because majority of all books I have planned include my own created worlds. It's not easy to keep two worlds unique when you work on them at the same time, ideas inevitably move from one to the other. I think this could work when the worlds are set concretely in my mind, but not at this stage when I am still exploring them. So this world deserves all my attention. And like the real world, it takes time to get to know every facade of imaginary worlds too.

So that's all the news on editing.

In other news, tomorrow we will have another guest post for "Why I Write..." series, so stay tuned.