Monday Memo: Writing Lessons

Note to self: Time's not truly wasted if you learnt something in the process.

Well, over the weekend I learned that sometimes you just have to start again from scratch. No, that's a lie, I actually started again with nine words.

The title, the two main characters names and the words Chapter One, were copied and pasted from Time Out and put into the new draft.

And that's it.

Remember how I thought most of the original draft of the story could be saved.

Nine words.

On Friday, after I posted my five things, I finally admitted to myself that while I love the idea Time Out contains, it just wasn't working in the format I originally wrote it in.

Adding together the first draft and my first attempt at a re-write, I've scraped 48,200 words in total - 19 writing days worth of work.

On Friday, I also started a bit of a writing marathon. I wrote 5,500 words on Friday. 6,000 on Saturday. 5,000 on Sunday. 16,500 words over the weekend on Time Out re-write 2. That's more each day than I've written on any other day this year, and by far the best weekend.

Which brings me to what I learnt. Those 19 days weren't wasted. I learnt a lot about the characters. I learnt a whole list of things that didn't work. I learnt a lot about how (and how not to) tackle re-writes. And most of all I learnt that sometimes you just have to face reality and get on with it. All of those things helped me get those 16,500 words out over the weekend. It was worth it.

So, what's on the cards for this week, you ask? (And, no, there's really no point saying you didn't ask, I'm going to tell you anyway :) )

I had planned to finish Time Out by yesterday. I still have about 20k left to go on it. With a bit of re-jigging, that's not a problem. By the hour - which I should have started today - can wait a little while longer. I'm going to try to get as much as I can of Time Out done this week.

I am, however, starting my new editing project today - right on schedule. For the Duration is a m/m novella - Book 3 in the Perfect Timing Series. I'm hoping to submit it at the end of the month.

I wrote the first draft back at the beginning of June and I haven't looked at it since, so I'm going to read it through with fresh eyes now and decide what needs to be done with it.

Wish me luck :)

P.S. The submission deadline for my submission for the Christmas Spirit's Anthology was today, so the results should be out soon...