My end-of-week report to you covering three major commitments I made: to write, edit, and read.
Writing
Very, very little. The majority of my time went into editing. As happened way too often, I had a couple of unexpected Real Life issues come up. Aside from my Day Job, I work with or sit on the board of a couple of non-profit organizations. All good stuff, but when something comes up, that takes time and energy.
I still want to get to "Down Among the Dead Men" this week. It feels like a good time to take a break from editing and do some writing. I have a couple of other finished stories that I need to review, revise and get into circulation now that we’re in the new year.
Commitments for this week:
Finish “Down Among the Dead Men”
Determine what existing stories I have that I should be submitting
Editing
I finished the scene analysis pass for “Sigils”. As part of outlining, some scenes got moved elsewhere in the novel. Others got moved to the “this should go in a sequel” bucket or were eliminated entirely. I took a lot of notes, and pretty much everything needs a minor rewrite of some sort.
Overall stats:
Started with ~ 90 scenes & 87k words
Ended with 85 scenes & 70k words
Identified 10 scenes that will need extensive rewrites. The guts of the scene work, but in the course of writing the rest of the novel some really basic changes to characters or the timeline mean that there are a lot of details that just don’t fit anymore.
Identified 16+ scenes that I will need to add. Some are transitions, others are “Wait, I forgot to write that bit?”
So I’ve got my work cut out for me. Not this week, though. I’m going to let everything sit and work on “Down Among the Dead Men”, then return to editing “Sigils” next week.
Commitments for this week:
Let “Sigils” sit until next week
Reading
Still on Crow Moon by Cedar Sanderson. I’m enjoying it so far, but I really need to not try to read when I’m about to fall asleep. I think I’ve started one of the stories three times now… no ding to Ms. Sanderson on that, it’s all on me for RWS (Reading While Sleepy).
![Crow Moon: A Collection of Fantastic Tales by [Cedar Sanderson]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QEWt!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4b7bdec-d295-4b9d-85a4-cb191bc89a98_338x500.jpeg "Crow Moon: A Collection of Fantastic Tales by [Cedar Sanderson]")
Other
Aside from Day Job and non-profit work, this was out last week the #1 Minion was on winter break before returning to college. We all got to see her little sister (Snugglepuppy) play in her school’s senior basketball invitational tournament. She was selected as a tournament all-star by the collected coaches, so even if they didn’t win in the end, she did well personally.
We also managed to get out and see the new Puss in Boots movie. A++, highly recommended. Solid storytelling and great characters; I particularly liked Goldilocks and the Three Bears. While there are no end credits, there is a nice callback at the end.