What did I accomplish over October?
Nowhere near as much as I would have liked.
Now, I am actually enjoying the editing process of Novel #1. I need to stop letting my anxiety get the best of me and grab my notebook and red pen and hightail it to the library for an hour or two, so I can comb through the manuscript to edit it.
I keep having to fix verb tense all over the place. This is an issue I have as the whole novel is written in the first-person point of view. I need to mark every single instance of mood where I have shifted scenes in a different direction and the mood of the scene, and the tone of the voices in the scene, has totally changed.
That is the beginning of my editing process.
Then I have to rewrite and combine all the edits from this first round. I also have to write new scenes since I took out so much earlier on in the editing process. I have to change the ending because now it is not a valid option. After all, in this novel, the original ending will no longer be able to happen.
I have to bulk the novel back up to sixty thousand words, so I can repeat the whole editing process again. Hopefully with a lot less rewriting and creating new scenes and so forth, we will see.
Also in October, I failed to write as many short stories and vignettes of spookiness across the board, even though I did manage to outline and create some basic plotlines involved in the Shadows Brigade Universe.
I finished reading Your Author Business Plan by Joanna Penn. I downloaded all the extras. I have run through some of the dreams and desires I have, some of the goals I want to set.
However, this is another case of get out of your house away from your family so you can clearly focus on what you are doing, even if that is simply for the scribbled mind-mapping idea-creating phase. I can come home and create a clear set-up in the notebook I have chosen as the permanent holder of My Author Plan, at least until I fill all the pages, without any issue.
Why did I choose a single notebook for this? Something with hundreds of empty pages in it? As, per Joanna Penn, I will re-evaluate and update this plan on a regular basis. For me, where I am at this moment, I plan to review mine every year.
Because this is the month of October, we have a lot of family activities going on. For some reason, we have a lot of appointments with our health care team, all of us, and we have a lot of planning for the next six months or so as a family to do in regards to travel and whatnot.
I personally have two trips I need to make, both at least twelve hours or more of driving one way, one towards the East, one towards the West, but thankfully, I have no deadlines on when I need to make these trips.
So, that’s where things stood for me in October.
What I learned from all of this is, that despite my medical issues, I need to create a more sustainable and doable schedule for my work. I am driving myself crazy with the whole, this is what I would like to accomplish…I need hard deadlines, even though I despise them.
How did your October go for you?
Tabitha Low 