an editing progress report

I’ve been going on some on this blog about how I’m going to finish editing my Mistress Novel before Script Frenzy starts but, I am sorry to say, even I didn’t really believe I could do it deep down in my soul. Then I realized early last week that I had exactly as many chapters left to edit as there were days left in the month meaning, if I did a chapter a day, I could actually really finish. This put a hell of a fire under me.

So I began editing like a maniac, so much so that I totally forgot to keep track of the hours meaning that my little writing reward system is totally botched up and I have no idea if I am close to the NaNoEdMo magic number or not. But for a while I was tearing along until I hit a several chapter span where a few chapters took several days each, thereby messing up the whole system. But I still kept working, determined. Surely, I reasoned, some days would be two chapter days and I would catch up.

The biggest thing at stake is that I am letting other things slide in favor of getting this book edited and I sure as hell can’t afford to do that for much longer so I have *got* to get this done ASAP. So slogging along as fast as I can when, of course, editing is something that you can’t really rush. So when it takes 2 days to get a chapter done its annoying, but I know its important.

Very annoying is that I moved chapters around and had to totally rewrite some sections meaning that, while most of the book is second draft quality, those newer sections are really more first draft quality so its going to require a third pass through which I was trying to avoid. So once I reach The End, I’m going to have to go back through the whole book again as it is. I don’t have time for this. But I have to make time. Such is the issue at hand.

Anyway, I just finished up editing Chapter 8 and there are about 22 chapters (I say “about” because I have to add another scene which may mess everything up again). So that leaves me with (yikes) 14 chapters left to do, one of which needs to be written from scratch because it is a whole new scene. There are 7 days left in this month so I would need to do 2 chapters a day to finish on time now. Eep!!

I was going to try to do two chapters today but in addition to the fact that this week is kicking my ass, my arm hurts from too much computer work so I’m going to stop. I don’t know whether to be glad I didn’t get too far behind with everything going on or mad that I’m not as far as I wanted to be but either way, I got some editing done today in addition to my day job and I guess that is really all anyone can ask for.

I did a whole ton of day job work today in the hopes that I would have tomorrow off of it to do nothing but editing but, of course, the day I need to take off of the day job is the day the day job actually wants my attention so I already know I’m going to get suckered into working tomorrow despite my best efforts which is annoying but, again, what can you do? Writing doesn’t pay the bills, as they say, so its going to stay second fiddle until it does.

Until tomorrow, my lovelies. My busted arm and I are going to bed.

Meanwhile, you should all ponder the real question here: Can I still edit my novel while writing my Script Frenzy script? Because I think this is how it is going to go down.