Spring break 2k15

Hello, I did not update this blog on Friday. However, the requirement for spring break was that you post and it didn't specify when. Since I am still on spring break, this blog is within the time parameters. 

So spring break. I've found it's nearly impossible to try to do anything productive during a time when you're not required to do anything at all. That said, I've been editing my way through the first draft. I've decided that right now I'm editing the story and then I'll go back through and edit the writing. This is likely the only way to stretch out the project until it ends. 

I have done some editing over break but, mostly, I've been doing nothing. I've watched quite a lot of Dan and Phil on YouTube, which has been incredibly unproductive but very worthwhile and entertaining. I took the SAT and later tried to meet an actor from Buffy who didn't show because he'd been arrested. I finished all of Supernatural so I don't have that distracting me anymore.  Oh, I passed my drivers test today. Congrats me. Now I have absolutely no excuse for sitting at home and not leaving the house. But I'm gonna do it anyway. 

I realize that this post is pretty much not at all about writing but that's okay. One of Veronica Roth's (or maybe it was Cassandra Clare's) writing tips is that after finishing your manuscript, you take a break from it for a week. While I didn't last an entire week before beginning my editing, I have been taking breaks. I suppose I just need to let the story simmer before diving back into it. 

Well, I don't think I have anything else to say. I'll probably come back while editing act 3 and whine about how hard editing it. Please bear with me. 

So spring break was chill. Break from school and break from work. I don't wanna go back to school but I don't really have a choice, do I? Oh, well. I'll cry later, I'm sure.  

Thanks for reading. 

Deliverable 5

So get this: I finished the first draft of my novel! After a long and arduous struggle, I finished chapter 19 over the weekend, chapter 20 on Tuesday, and the epilogue on Wednesday. It's terribly unedited and needs a lot of help. Everyone's been asking me what I'm going to do for the duration of the project. I don't understand. Do people believe books are perfect after the first draft, or that spelling and grammar errors don't occur ever or that plotholes don't spontaneously occur as you're writing? As an amateur writer, I can assure you all of this happens--and often. So I have my work cut out for me. The project isn't finished and neither am I.

Anyway, here's my clever photo of the entire novel.

That should be every page included and the whole pages wouldn't all fit so some of them are halves. Current, unedited stats are 168 pages on Microsoft Word, since there are no page breaks for chapters, and 42,291 words.

Yay for deliverables! Also I'm posting late because my laptop lost its mind last night so I tried to update it and it froze on 17/44 updates for like 5 straight hours so I had to hard  shut it down and then it was 11pm when I tried to restart it and it decided not to work at all and I had the SAT this morning at 8am and I wanted to sleep and evidently so did my laptop. But it's working now. Remind me to update my laptop more often.

Thanks for reading.

Not a deliverable week

Do you remember the times when I would blog and I wouldn't have writers block? Yeah, I don't either. I have a deliverable due next Friday and it happens to be the entire rough draft of the entire novel and I'm entirely too stressed about it. I probably shouldn't be.  I should be finished with chapter 19 by tonight. Then all that's left is chapter 20 and the epilogue. 

So Elsie goes through some pretty heavy stuff during the war and I figure, since we've been studying mental disorders in psychology, why not give her PTSD? Of course in order to write the PTSD, I have to give her some serious psychological damage in previous acts. There was a split second where I considered changing my deliverable to a rewrite of act 3 but I'm not going to be a weak writer. You're not supposed to reread your writing before you're finished because then you'd only spend time editing and never get anywhere. It's best to have something to edit and then return to it then spend all your time going in circles in the same spot. 

So I will be continuing with the original plan. Finish this act by next Friday and spend the time editing until the next deliverable. Strange to think that I'm nearing the end of my little ink journey with Elsie. But there's always editing. And there could be the possibility of a sequel (there won't be one--probably). Actually if I wrote a sequel, it would be about someone else in WWII, maybe with ties to Elsie. But I'll cross that bridge when I get there and I haven't even finished paving the road I'm currently on. 

But yeah I'll probably finish chapter 19 tonight, which I'm starting to like as much as chapter 14. It's really cute. 

Maybe another snippet next week. Acually I have to have proof of my deliverable and I have a clever idea for that so who knows what could happen. Thanks for reading.