Hello Internet!
I feel like this week has been moderately productive. I’ve not managed to get my lazy arse to further work on the portion of The Rule of Iron I’ve been rewriting, but I did reach my more concrete goal of doing a close edit of Chapter Two. It’s changes are still just ink on my printout, but Chapter One got put into a new file.
I’m currently organizing my second draft by copy-pasting or adding in anything I finish revising. Kevin, a friend of mine, told me that one way of keeping track of editing is via wordcount, and I’m considering doing this through keeping track of the wordcount of that second draft document. Seems as reasonable a system as any, and gives me the added advantage of being able to say “Look, I did this much!”
I’m also (yet again!) reconsidering my tactical approach to revising the book. Somewhere in the last week I realized that there’s actually a couple chapters between the beginning, and where I want my rewrite to splice into the book; enough that it could actually be worth passing around to people. So, I’m thinking that trying to set my focus on revising those chapters could be another good way of marking out concrete work.
My goal for this upcoming week, then, is to have Chapter Three revised, at least in ink. I’d love to be able to finish working over and entering those early chapters by March 31st, including giving all of them a quick third pass.
However, some friends of mine in a writing group are talking about doing another 50k challenge (like the one for National Novel Writing Month; I don’t know yet if they’re doing Camp NaNo or not, though) and I’m inclined to join them. It was a fun experience last time, after all! Plus, it may be wise to take a break from Rule for a month, and get some fresh blood and ideas into my system.
The biggest challenge with that is that I would need to take some time off from Rule right now, just to do outlining, a bit of world- and character-building, and possibly some research to prep myself for April 1st. I’m quite tempted to do so, but I don’t want to leave Rule behind forever. Even if it’s never a “great novel,” I’d like to at least finish the thing to some degree of my own satisfaction.
Reading-wise, I’ve gotten through Valor, and I’m on to Ruin from John Gwynne’s “The Faithful and the Fallen” series. (In fact, reading Ruin is why this post is a day late. Sorry!) I also managed to find the full set of Jacob Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology used at a local story. I’m crazy excited to tackle that (I’ve read the first twenty pages or so, and it’s gonna be a nightmare!) but that’s going to need a lot more time that I’m currently willing to dedicate. Still, exciting to find something like that; I don’t know an enormous amount about the Norse/Germanic Mythologies, and I’m excited to explore these volumes.
Anyway, that’s all from me.
Akhelas 