End-of-April Updates

Today, just a quick update on some odds and ends after last week's crazy-long train trip post.

I've been trying to work steadily toward my Camp NaNoWriMo goal. I'm not going to get there—as of today I'm at 10,832 of my 20,000-word goal, but in other ways, I've succeeded. My point in entering in the first place was to finally finish a draft of my work in progress. And with only a couple days left in the month, I'm very close. In its current incarnation (always possible that this will change or evolve in the future) my WIP is divided into 24 chapters, and I've got a solid draft of 23 of them. That means I have all weekend to finish drafting one last chapter. By the numbers, I'll still be far short of the goal I set. But I prefer to think of it as misjudging how many words I needed to get to that first draft, rather than failing to reach my goal.

Simultaneously (and to the detriment of my WIP) I've also been working on another revision of my book, based on feedback from both editors and my agent. More little tweaks to raise the tension here, cut the fat there. Which means another read-through during which I think, at least fifteen times, how did I not see that before? Is that normal? Regardless, I'm almost ready to send it back for agent feedback and hopefully another set of editors will be reading it soon.

Early next week I hear if I'll advance to the final round of the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge. If I do, I'll have only 24 hours (!) next weekend to write a 1500-word story. Yikes. Why do I do this to myself again? Oh, yeah. Because it's fun.

Happy Friday everyone! And until next week, stay dry in those end-of-April showers.