In my last post, I said my goal had been to finish Spirit by the end of 2013. When that didn't quite work out, I made my next deadline May of this year - when my kids wrapped up their school year.
Mmm... Nope. Didn't happen then either. Closer, a lot closer, but still not ready for beta eyes. And still way too many words.
Massive cutting and revising gobbled up the midnights of summer and finally it happened. Took me a minute to recognize it. I even wrote the actual words "The End" after the last period because it seemed just that unreal. The word count was down to a more reasonable figure, just under 80k, and after one last read through, Spirit went off to beta readers before I gave in to the temptation to tear into it again.
In August.
Just before the kids went back to school.
I've heard from one reader and my dead PC monitor is serving as quite a fantastic board for the Post-It collection of notes from his critique. I'm not expecting to hear from the second for a number of weeks yet. Revision mapping will be further planned when I do.
(*Note to self, buy more sticky notes)
~L
Mmm... Nope. Didn't happen then either. Closer, a lot closer, but still not ready for beta eyes. And still way too many words.
Massive cutting and revising gobbled up the midnights of summer and finally it happened. Took me a minute to recognize it. I even wrote the actual words "The End" after the last period because it seemed just that unreal. The word count was down to a more reasonable figure, just under 80k, and after one last read through, Spirit went off to beta readers before I gave in to the temptation to tear into it again.
In August.
Just before the kids went back to school.
I've heard from one reader and my dead PC monitor is serving as quite a fantastic board for the Post-It collection of notes from his critique. I'm not expecting to hear from the second for a number of weeks yet. Revision mapping will be further planned when I do.
(*Note to self, buy more sticky notes)
~L