Day 16: messy middle

Daily goal: 4,140 words/day.

Today: 4,266 words

221 Pages Edited so Far

Draft 2 Goal: Increase Conflict and Suspense

I'm back from a long weekend of hanging out with my college bestie, her husband and their 1 year old kiddo. It was wonderful.

On Thursday, I thought I could take my 5-10 hour day and condense it to two hours. I failed. Today I basically had to redo all of Thursdays work and then do today's work. I'm exhausted.

The problem wasn't just the workload, it's that I was editing the middle of my book. Frankly, I still don't know what needs to happen with my book's messy middle... it's a constant battle between wanting to do my best editing but also knowing that I am not gonna get it perfect right now and I have to accept that.

My book has huge holes. I am slowly learning how to fill them, but I have to work faster than I can think.

Next time I do a sprint like this, I think I need to bake in 'big picture days' once a week, where I tackle large issues that necessitate me going back through the book and fixing a ton of things instead of just focusing on the 4,000 pages in front of me.

PS: I was struggling with a massive gap in my book today. A character does something for a long time that is not aligned with their biggest goal... I didn't know how to make it work. And then I read an offhand remark from another character about this character, and it answered everything for me. So cool that sometimes a book can solve itself.