All caught up with my pages, look­ing for­ward to com­plet­ing this les­son tomor­row!

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Doing well on the Lesson 2 work­sheets des­pite the slow start yesterday.

I’m catch­ing on to the concept of look­ing for char­ac­ters and items that are intro­duced for the first time, and mark­ing them accord­ingly. It’s pos­sible to skim quite a lot this way, and I’m encour­aged by how many times the story pulls me in dur­ing scenes I could be passing over.

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Today I covered less ground in my manu­script than I would have liked, get­ting through 30 pages instead of 65. I’m happy with the qual­ity of work, though.

I spent some time on the HTRYN for­ums, get­ting a bet­ter idea of how to pro­ceed which was time well spent. I also got through most of my ‘Main Character’ work­sheets, as so many of them appear in the first few chapters. These are much more time con­sum­ing than the other work­sheets, which track the intro­duc­tion of all items and char­ac­ters in the story.

Sound like a lot of work? It is. But since I know what I’m look­ing for, the pages go by at a good rate.

I will look at the for­ums some more tomor­row, then see how far I can get. Still optim­istic about fin­ish­ing by Friday.

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I got through Lesson One in one week, which feels great. Took a look at next week’s les­son, and it is also worksheet-​intense. I may have less time to work next week, but I want the goal set to com­plete it in a week again.

Sometimes momentum is the only thing that keeps me going, and I don’t want to lose it.

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So with everything prepped and ready, get­ting down to the busi­ness of revis­ing this morn­ing went very well. If I keep up with doing 65 pages a day, I will be through all of Lesson One in How To Revise Your Novel by the end of the week!

A strong start, which I intend to carry through to a strong fin­ish.

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So this week I have made the time to pre­pare a new under­tak­ing. I got fur­ther in revis­ing my novel Phoenix and the Vulture than the pro­gress bar cur­rently indic­ates (will fix that soon), and then got blind­sided by other commitments.

Lesson learned? Don’t make other commitments!

The new goal is to go back to my first Nanonovel, Gift of the Ancients and give it a final revision.

This is a manu­script I’ve already spent at least a year work­ing on since it was writ­ten. I’ve made may improve­ments, but there were still some things I knew needed fix­ing, just couldn’t prop­erly define.

Going through How To Revise Your Novel will give me the tools, as it says, to “Get the novel I want from the novel I have.” I meant to cut my teeth on this course with Phoenix and the Vulture, but only made it so far. There is a time factor for get­ting Gift done, which helps me to focus, so I’m really look­ing for­ward to this. Deadlines are my friend.

Watch for pro­gress reports, which will include actu­ally sub­mit­ting the manu­script to an editor. It’s time for this Work In Progress to get to work!

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