Daynote - Wed 23 Apr
Finishing the word count cut.
It's a bit dreich this morning, and I was so close to the end of this draft that I powered through and got it done.
ON DECK: A very decent -1,221 words cut from the draft this morning and I ended this first edit on precisely 103,000 words. I may have cut an extra couple of prepositions to get a nice round number. Very satisfying.
TOOLS AND PROCESS: I haven't quite hit the target of 98-100k words that I was aiming for, but I'm pretty close. Now that the book is in the right ballpark length-wise, I have a sequence of editing prep tasks to do - firstly making a detailed timeline from the current set of scenes in Aeon Timeline, then re-read the whole thing with that timeline at hand to mark up all my (inevitable) continuity errors.
Once I've got that set of edit notes, I'll combine them with my critique partner notes and do a final fast edit that's aiming to polish the whole thing up, make everything line up and provide a solid draft for submission. But my writing time for the next few days will not involve much typing - I'll be clicking timelines and reading on my Supernote instead.
LISTENING: Glad to see the 'In Haste' podcast come back for a new season, kicking off with this excellent episode about difficult second books, including an interview with Jennie Godfrey.
WATCHING: We started on THE LAST OF US last night, namely the second season. It's very interesting watching it with someone who hasn't played the games, just like it was with the first season. So far, so excellent.
READING: More ALL THE COLOURS OF THE DARK last night, which is still dazzling me. I'm also reading a bit of PLANETSIDE by Michael Mammay, which is about as different as you can get (military SF) but I'm enjoying that too.
LINK: Here's a handy tool I got from Phil Gyford - all the conversion tools and calculators you could ever need, in one place.
UP NEXT: As above, I'll take a short breath, then crack on with timelining and (another) readthrough. Got to admit, I think I finally cracked my editing process once I realised that reading a book multiple times, while it can suck, is actually a very effective way to make it better. But it can still be a bit annoying and dull. Still, hey-ho, on we go. Onward!