April and May 2015 Project Lists and April Bait, Fish, and Reel Report … COMBINED!

Why hello there!

No, no, I didn’t forget about you. I was just busy editing the novel and playing Dragon Age every free waking moment of April. But here I am at long last with another much-needed update!

If you’ve been following along the last few months, you know that April was Camp NaNoWriMo and that I planned to edit my novel for at least 30 hours as my Camp goal. Thus, the Project List for April 2015 was rather simple:

April 2015 Project List:

• Edit PRIMUS for at least 30 hours, ideally finishing Phase One of Passive Editing.

I am happy to report that I met my Camp goal, and in fact, slightly exceeded it. I managed 33.5 hours of editing in the month of April, and completed the initial read-through. So, at the end of April 2015, Phase One of my Grand Master Editing Plan is FINISHED. The progress feels good! It makes it feel like this thing might actually be doable. (Until I sit down to begin Phase Two, anyway…)

I have a large chunk of notes I made while reading on what needs to be fixed. Punctuation, capitalization of certain words, changing certain words, awful sentences, pronoun confusion, repetitive dialogue tags, confusing passages, repetitive sentence structure, the need for additional scenes fleshing out plot and character, etc.

Phase Two of the Grand Master Editing Plan will be to implement this pile of notes into the draft itself. Bleh. But, necessary. And at least I know exactly what I’m aiming for now, and can see it as it relates to the big picture of the book as a whole.

So that’s what I accomplished in April 2015, that and not much else. At least related to writing. Well, that’s not entirely true. Doctor Who Watch has been keeping me pretty darn busy! In fact, that’s where all my spare blogging time has gone, over to the good Doctor! Oh well, I can’t really complain!

So what is in store for May 2015, then? Besides more Whovian goodness, anyway …

May 2015 Project List:

• Begin Phase Two of Editing. (Already started. Reluctantly.)
• Write at least one more short story for novella “The Hound of God”.
• Acquire artist for “Hound of God” illustrations. (Done! “Official” announcement naming this awesome person will come a little later on!)
• Attend ConQuesT convention over Memorial Day weekend.

I think I’m just going to leave it at that. I’ve given up on keeping up with SFWA submissions this year, as most of those stories need some edits before going out again, and I want to concentrate on the novel! Plus, my call with the Book Doctor and my webinar with Kristen Lamb has me newly enthusiastic about selling this thing … eventually.

Yeah, yeah, this ain’t nothin’ compared to Dayton Ward’s monthly writing wrap-up, but we all gotta start somewhere! 😉

Hopefully I can get back here pretty soon to detail the The Book Doctor call and the webinar, but until then … happy writing and reading, folks!