Day 300. And a big milestone, and not just for the number — I finally finished Draft 2 of Section 1! Woo-hoo!
I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to finish it, I have to tell you. Between trying to carve out chunks of time to work on it and my infernal (but necessary) tinkering, it kept dragggging on me. I must admit, I feel a whole lot lighter with that in the can!
I also have a feeling that taking the extra time to lay the groundwork for the rest of the novel will pay off. When I wrote the first draft, I found that I experimented with several different possible and parallel storylines. Obviously, at some point I had to decide on one, which was a lot of what I was doing in Section 1. Now, I have a pretty firm grasp on who the characters are, and (most importantly) what direction they are going.
Next up — re-reading Draft 1 of Section 2 and then plotting what to cut out and what to work with. I should be rolling on that early this week.
In other news, The Hack Novelist put me onto a neat little online service: Grooveshark. Previously, I had been creating YouTube playlists. The problem was though that videos would disappear, glitch, or otherwise stop. And of course there were those ads to jolt me out of my groove thang.
Grooveshark has none of those (well, actually, it did glitch on me once…). The sound is crystal clear (YouTube isn’t known for its quality either) and it is easy to use. The selection is much better too — I even found “Kilimanjaro” by Jaluka, an ultra-rare song in this neck of the woods.
Take a look at some of my Novel-Writing Playlists here, or make your own.
Until next time,
~Graham
Novel Writing Hours
Today: 2.5
Total: 145.25