My mid-week report to you that covers the three major commitments I’ve made: to write, to edit, and to read.
OK, mid-week-ish. A day late, but not a dollar short…
Writing
About a thousand words last week on Sigils. Those last two are going to be hairy - they’re major scenes that more or less require a complete rewrite, thanks to shifts in character age. On top of that, there are 16+ scenes that I’ve identified that still need to be written for one reason or another.
I’m kicking around the idea of taking a quick break and drumming out something for the Five Second Rule universe call for submissions.
Commitments for this week:
Rewrite those last two dang scenes for Sigils
Start filling in the gaps with the other scenes
Editing
Again, on Sigils, all but two scenes are edited. Those last two are going to be hairy - they’re major scenes that more or less require a complete rewrite, thanks to shifts in character age. On top of that, and the scenes to be written, there are 23 that have major "TODO" comments. That leaves me at 84 scenes done out of 102 in the outline, so I’m happy. I was hoping to be a third of the way through my first pass by this point, so I'm pleased with my progress.
I did a little bit of light editing on the novel as well, experimenting with some regular expressions that I put together to help with finding problems. Yeah, geeky. A few of them need revision, but if/when I get them all hammered out, I’ll post them here at some point.
Commitments for this week:
Keep to my established editing schedule
Keep revising those regexes
Reading
Almost finished with the first Space Cowboys collection. There’s some really good stuff in there. Memorable situations, interesting characters - and even some worlds that I would like to find out more about. I’ll work on getting a review of that up after I’m done. Then I’ll move on to Space Cowboys 2: Electric Rodeo to see what my fellow authors have done in that space.
… which reminds me that I should review Postcards from Mars as well. Maybe. I need to check out Amazon’s policies on reviews to make sure that won’t cause issues.
I didn’t get around to doing any writer’s group critiques. I know we have a few people finishing short stories now, so I’ll keep my eyes open and try to jump on them when they become available.
Commitments for this week:
Finish & review Space Cowboys
Start Space Cowboys 2: Electric Rodeo
Investigate Amazon’s review policies
Keep alert for requested critiques from my writer’s group
Other
The Day Job is still somewhat limbo-ish, unfortunately. It’s really a matter of the higher-ups deciding how things are going to go. Until then, I’ve got plenty of good things to do, thankfully. I’ve made a lot of progress on one particular project as well, which makes me happy. Even if I have to abandon it for business reasons, it looks like I will be able to get it into a the “rough draft” proof-of-concept state so we can eventually haul it out of mothballs if needed.
I’ve also been continuing to evaluate my other areas of involvement. I’m working on slimming down or re-targeting my social media to the areas that I’m particularly interested in. Very helpful in maintaining my sanity, because there are a LOT of idiots out there these days. I find that my desire to engage in arguments for the sake of arguing are functionally zero anymore. Too much to do, too little time to spend entertaining the idle idiots of social media.