Revising The Empty God

[moonmomma]

still slogging away revising the novel formerly known as "The Empty/Broken God" ("Saerasu" being the quasi-divine entity that may or may not have given magic to the world). I decided to set a daily work goal to try to keep going at a steadier pace. I'll report here daily to keep myself accountable.

Daily Revision Goal: 2 hours or 5 pages of manuscript revised, whichever comes last.

Right now I'm on p. 111 of approximately 305 pages of manuscript. (I say approximately; it's actually a little less because I printed out one chapter twice, but numbered the pages consecutively - the chapter was repeated but not the page numbers )

[moonmomma]

6/23 - 2 hours, 7 pages of manuscript revised. I'm up to p. 120, almost at the end of a chapter. typing in revisions is the same - 2 hours a day, or 5 pages of revision, whichever comes last. typing in revisions is faster than marking them with red pen, so i can probably get more like 10 pages, or even more, done in 2 hours.

[moonmomma]

6/24 - 2 hours, typed in corrections for most of the chapter
6/25 - 2 hours, finished typing in corrections, revised I'm not sure how many pages, on p. 131/305 (the duplicate chapter was before this, so the page count from here on out is accurate)

I don't want to burn myself out, so I won't hold myself to 2 hours a day on weekends, though I'll still try to get some done at least on Saturdays.

[moonmomma]

6/27 Finished typing in the corrections for chapter 11. Which used to be the back half of chapter 7 and the first third of chapter 8. Been splitting and combining chapters so that now most of chapter 8 is going to be chapter 12.

[moonmomma]

meh, I've had a hard time keeping up with my revision goals this week. The week started with me putting a roast in the crockpot, setting it out on the patio so it wouldn't heat up the house, and then discovering 6 hours later that I had forgotten to turn it on. and didn't really get any better from there.

7/3 - Finished typing in revisions for Chapter 12 (formerly known as the back 2/3 of chapter 8). finished up to p. 141/305

[moonmomma]

This would be going a lot faster if I was sticking to my daily goals

7/9 finished typing in revisions on chapter 13. pages: 153/305

[moonmomma]

blarg, if i would stick to my goals this would be going a lot faster

7/27 finished typing in chapter 14. pages: 170/305

yes, typing in. There were so many edits in this chapter i decided to re-type the whole thing from scratch instead of just making the corrections. I changed probably three times as much stuff as i kept.

[moonmomma]

7/31 finished typing in corrections to Chapter 15; page 183/305
edited 6 pages of chapter 16, but most of this was cutting a scene and a half.

I'm seriously going to finish this revision by Aug. 31. A little over 3.3 pages a day; I can do it.

When this revision is done, I'm going to let it sit for a bit while I do some more prep work and drafting on the other two projects that are knocking on my brain.

[moonmomma]

8/2 finished typing in corrections on Chapter 16. combined two fight scenes into one, and another chunk is going to get moved to Chapter 14. finished to p. 194/305.

still have 55 minutes to go on my timer for today.

[moonmomma]

8/5 2 hours, edited about 9 pages. up to page 209 out of 305. will finish editing chapter 17 tomorrow and start typing in the changes.

[moonmomma]

8/7 finished typing in changes to Chapter 17. Put the first 1/3 of Ch. 17 into Chapter 16. finished through p. 210/305.

still 70 minutes to go on my timer today.

[moonmomma]

8/17 finished typing in the revisions for ch. 18, p. 224/305.

I got sick and couldn't get much done for a few days, but if I really work hard I can still get this revised draft done by Aug. 31.

[moonmomma]

8/22 finished typing in corrections to chapter 19. page 236/305

[moonmomma]

well, i missed my deadline but i'm a lot closer to done than I was a month ago, and it shouldn't take too much longer. the main characters of "Earthsinger" are setting up a ruckus in my head, so as soon as I'm done with this revision I'm going to have to figure out how to keep them AND the cast of "Urdaisunia" happy at the same time while I let "Empty God" rest before the next revision And then there's NaNo in a few months... busy busy

[moonmomma]

Phew! *pant pant* almost done! halfway through the last chapter, and then a three page epilogue! I'm about to use up my second red pen. *pant pant*

[moonmomma]

Finished!!!

with the first revision, anyway. probably two more to go, one to work out the rest of the problems with scene, plotline, etc., the other to polish. I've got a long list of revision notes, name changes, etc. to take care of on the next go-through. For now, though, I'll set it aside while I work on a couple of other projects and then do NaNoWriMo.

This revision came out to 129,000 words (the first draft was 137,000).

Oh, and I've backed up the new version in three places: USB drive, Google Docs, and my new Dropbox account that my son talked me into getting so he could earn more free storage on his account.