Crankin

It's hard to summarize the work I've been doing, but there's been a lot of it to be sure. I supposed if I was putting in my usual 90-120 minute sessions everyday then my guess of 5 weeks for this draft would be accurate, but I've been putting in a lot more time than that. I can't seem to stop working on it. It's good to be in this space.

I'm kind of unofficially done with draft 3. I reached the end of it this morning. But as usual I have a certain number of items I want to consider and tidy up before drawing a line between this and whatever comes next. There's no rush, and given some of the other stuff I have going on this week, I'll probably take the rest of the week.

I think the book is a lot stronger than it was two weeks ago. I really like some of the changes I made. We'll see what happens after I get some distance and start seeing it through someone else's eyes. I hope that comes soon. I feel like it's close to time to get some critique from other readers. If that follows the pattern I'll be severely disillusioned before long.

One thing I definitely know is improved is the length. I expected to get some back in this draft, but I really thought I would have to make another focused pass later in the "kill your darlings" mode. That might not be necessary, because just in an organic way I made changes that brought it from 325 pages to 280 pages and from 76,000 words to 67,500 words -- 11%. My goal was 65,000 words, but I'm quite comfortable with the length of it right now. Any cutting from here on will be just because something doesn't belong.

I'm going to have to turn my attention to some of my paying work for the next few days, so that will be slowing me down.