blah, blah writing blah blah.

Sorry, another boring writer's blog.

I've done 27 chapters over the last 9 days. 7 chapters still to rewrite. I have 1 chapter, the last, to write from scratch.

I've been locked in my room, writing at least 6 hours, up to 10 hours per day. I've left the house only once.

My brain is drained. I started strong, but I'm limping to the finish.

I've been diligent. But this has been a great reminder of how much time I used to devote to writing, and why I couldn't knock off a novel in my spare time. It requires all my attention all the time, or it slips away.

I don't know if the book is ready for primetime, yet. Or even good enough to submit as a pilot. I know I've improved it, incrementally at least.

I'm pushing through to the end of the rewrite, by Tuesday. Take two days off, go to work, and then come back and write the last chapter. Then go to work again, then come back and decide what I want to do.

Should I try to run through it again? I'm sort of inclined that way, right now. I had thought I would be done, but now I can see how much work needs to be done.

I think there was some self-deception here. I thought I could take the second draft, and pass it along. But now that I've actually almost finished it, I'm thinking it needs more work.

Here's the thing. If at the beginning of the second draft, you had told me I might need to do yet another run-thru before passing it along for vetting, I might have despaired. But now that I'm actually done, it doesn't seem quite so daunting.

I don't want to waste my critiquers -- I know from past experience that you only get that one chance at it.

We'll see.

I'm finding that even the small amount of written criticism by my writer's group has been hugely helpful.

Yesterday, I came to a dramatic scene, and one of the critiquers wrote "boring."

Harsh, but when I looked at, totally true.

So I ramped up the drama, had the character make a rousing speech, and the scene works much better.

The best criticism is when I'm told I've not done enough to dramatize the scene, or I've done too much boring explaining.

A blank page is hard to dig into. Having some criticism, any criticism, is like finding a path up a cliff. Something I can work with.

The other thing I've noticed, and this is more in the way of copyediting, but it's amazing how easy it is to missed dropped words. (or backward words, heh.) Nine people may have read the manuscript, but only one finds the error.

When we read, we tend to fill in so much that I think a simple dropped "a" or "the" can be totally overlooked. Even more complex words can be completely missed.

I'm assuming that other writers find this whole process easier, or they aren't as lazy as me, or both. Or there would be less books in the world. Or maybe there are just so many people. Something.

I'm impressed by other writers, I can tell you that.