And now, the end is near…
So, not the most exciting of weekends as far as extra-curricular activity, but definitely did some good work. I powered through the entire third draft of my novel as I prepare to tackle the fourth. I had been going linear, until I read in a few books that you need to read the whole work in a short period of time so you know the big picture and can edit toward that. Otherwise, it’s a bunch of line edits.
Some observations:
– For some strange reason, I was really adverse to contractions. Like, if the whole point is pulling readers through the book and keeping up a quick pace, contractions are your friend. I actually wrote on the inside cover of the third draft all the phrases that could become contracted, so that will be a separate find/replace exercise, although that probably has to occur outside the main writing window, since that’s a bit too mundane for filling the whole window outright. Maybe that will be an eBay commute task on the laptop.
– I used to overuse the word “that” a lot, but for some reason, there were a ton of extraneous “just”s. I can’t even think of one in the context I dislike, but they’re in there.
– Completely retooling the ending is actually more cutting than rewriting, and it’s completely surgical, only 2-3 references earlier in the book need to be massaged for it to work. It was nice being in Chapter 2 and seeing something stand out as half a sentence that can be tweaked to set up the ending.
– There’s a whole middle section I never liked much, but I used to always find reasons to keep it. I didn’t find those reasons this time.
And, the part that always surprises me and I hope indicates I’m on the right track: once again, after how many freaking years now, I still enjoyed reading it. That still seems strange.
On other fronts, it looks like my job is kinda-sorta safe, a few shenanigans in the way I’m paid, and it continues. In a bad economy, that’s great news.
This week, although I may have promised this last week and not followed through, I start weight training on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings. Those are typically non-commute days, so even after waking up at 4 a.m. to work on the book, there’s enough time to fit in cardio and lifting.
I’m a bit torn on my cardio workouts. With no TV, and only commuting two days, I’ve been working out while watching TV. The other day, I didn’t feel like watching anything, so I just did music and it was a LOT faster and I burned a lot more calories, so I’m sort of like, “Dude, more music.” That said, on the heart rate monitor, I’m still at the beginning of the cardio zone, not dipped down into the fat burning zone, and I do keep my heart rate where it’s supposed to be. So, I’m sure it’s fine.
The job sticking around is very good news, as I’m debt-free in two weeks, so I’ll be able to start funneling the money into savings a little, but then fund my web projects Vegocentric and the next generation of Oasis, turning both into full-on social networks, with Vego hopefully even generating some revenue at some point.
Well, time to chill out now, so I can fall asleep in an hour (8:15p). This schedule does require attention. It could go off the rails easily.
