Summer Schedule

I love the fact Hubby is able to be home with us during the summers; however, the massive change in schedules causes a bit of upheaval at first in the household. As anyone who has very young children will tell you, the slightest change in their day can cause havoc for a while. It's the same when he returns to work in the fall and after Christmas break.

We're finally beginning to settle into a summer schedule now that Hubby being home has stopped being such a surprise every morning. (I honestly think Boo thought every day was Saturday there for a while!) I'm hoping this means afternoons will be more productive for Hubby and I both.

The girls' naps were disrupted for a while, but they have begun to settle back into the routine of sharing one long nap time in the early afternoon instead of staggering it so one of them is always awake. So, we find ourselves with a two to four hour block where we can work without interruption. Therefore, we've decided to begin switching off who has the laptop and who has the main computer.

Only the main computer has internet access, and the laptop has minimal programs on it. It's mostly just for word processing, so which computer we are using largely determines which projects we can or cannot work on. (Hubby has to track down resources for some classes, but has hard copies of them for others.)

The laptop was one item stuck in a random place during the move simply to get it out of the way, and we only found it on the fourth. Since then, I've managed to cut the overwriting and rewrite the first nine and a half chapters. Now that I know where the laptop is, I plan to make much more progress toward finally putting this novel to bed.

I hope to see Right of Succession before agents by the end of summer.

Follow Friday

Sorry for the lapse, readers. I've been distracted in the mornings with catching back up after last week's reverse vacation, and Hubby's new books came earlier in the week, so he's been wanting the "office" to work on lesson plans. (Writing them now means we see him more during the school year, which we all want.)

I'm actually trying to type up a really fast post, so I can bring something useful to you. But there's much to do this morning, so time is scarce. Therefore, I bring you a new category: Follow Fridays. Those of you on Twitter will recognize the phrase. Twitterers have been using follow Fridays to recommend users to follow for months; however, there really isn't a lot of space to tell your readers why to follow someone in 140 characters. So, I'm going to do it here. Plus, some weeks I'll bring you Follow Fridays for Facebook or blogs.

Today's follow Friday is @hownottowrite. Jamie Groves is an aspiring novelist who discusses writing and his personal journey towards publication in his blog, How Not to Write. On twitter, he is known to link to good articles on writing and publishing, posts quotes, witty banter, and his adventures with his two young boys.

Reverse Vacation: Day 5

Mom was home and preparing for a trip yesterday, so I only did a half day. Still, it was enough to add the end of chapter nine and first half of chapter ten. The total days word count was around 2000 words.

So, what was accomplished during the reverse vacation?

1. All four previously rewritten chapters were polished up and are now ready for submission once the rest of the novel is rewritten and polished as well.

2. Chapters five through nine and half of chapter ten were rewritten, and I'm talking major rewrites! Events from the end of the book were bumped up to the first half. A few things from the beginning are being slotted for later chapters. A few minor characters have had their personalities altered, and I decided to venture into the Ralic's mind for the first time. (That's a creepy place, let me tell you!)

3. Some chapters are longer now despite cutting huge swaths of purple prose because they're two or three of the old chapters. Now instead of forty-two chapters where some are just a page or two long, I anticipate about thirty to thirty-three longer, tighter, and more in depth chapters.

4. One third of the novel was reworked: almost 10 chapters and approximately 28,000 words. Will the end product top out at 84,000 words? I don't really know, but I'm shooting for at least 76,000, which is about 24,000 more than the previous version. I'm no longer trying to cram the novel into the young adult category, and it's freeing both in word count and in writing some of the darker elements.

So, what's the conclusion? The reverse vacation was a huge success in my book. I was able to kick the last of the caffeine habit. (Being able to actually nap a couple of those first days was a big part of staying off java!) I rewrote the first third of Right of Succession and mapped out what I want to do with the rest. And finally, Hubby proved he could manage the girls and the housework at least to a passable degree for a full week without ripping his hair out by the roots, if he doesn't have grading or lesson plans due at the end of said week.

Reverse Vacation: Day 4

Today was another productive day. I finished chapter eight and wrote the majority of chapter nine after tending to the house I routinely clean. Today's word count topped out at around 2500 words.

The story has changed more this week than I thought it would. The plot itself is the same, but the timing of certain events has been shuffled about to a great extent. This has required a more extensive rewrite than I originally anticipated, but I think the effect is increased. I know the emotional content has definitely been upped a notch or three. The last full version I wrote was before Hubby and I were married, and I've learned a great deal about the dynamics between husband and wife.

And no, Right of Succession isn't a romance. A couple of the main characters are a young couple.

Reverse Vacation: Day 3

I only put in half a day on the novel today. Our pantry was finally installed last week, so the morning was taken up with the monthly Aldi run to stock up on nonperishable and frozen goods we haven't been able to do for the last several months.

After lunch, I managed about half the word count I hit yesterday, but it was enough to finish off chapter seven and make it two or three paragraphs into chapter eight.

Monday I decided to change the timing of a major event, and it has had lasting repercussions. I've been struggling to reorder everything to reflect the new change, and I'm sure I will continue to do so throughout the first half of the novel. It's difficult, but I'm happier with the new material than I've been with any piece in a long time.

As any readers of the other blog know, I'm also kicking the caffeine habit this week. I never guessed how much of a difference it made until I cut out the last dregs from my diet. I've been sleeping well, but I'm still in a fog most mornings. I'm looking forward to this fading in coming days.

Tomorrow we start getting into the heart of the plot.

Reverse Vacation: Day 2

Day two of the reverse vacation saw more progress. It's perhaps not as impressive as yesterday, but still, progress.

I finished the last of chapter five. Then I combined previous chapters seven and nine to make the new chapter six, and began rewriting the old chapter ten as the new chapter seven. All in all, it was only 2300 new words. It's a paltry sum, and chapter six takes up the majority of the new word count. However, it was one of the more difficult chapters I'll have to write this week. I've completely changed several characterizations, and balancing the new interactions required a few false starts.

I'd hoped to get more done, but a sleep deficit I built up this weekend thanks to some disturbing dreams caught up with me early in the afternoon. I decided to take a quick nap to prevent writing gibberish and didn't wake up until three hours later. So, although I didn't produce as much new verbiage as I would have liked, I believe it is at least high quality work. The test will be in the reread at the end of the month.

Reverse Vacation: Day 1

So far the reverse vacation is going well. I got to Mom's house early in the morning and got to work. By lunch I'd gotten the first three chapters polished. I got chapter four polished, figured out how I'm going to rearrange the remainder of the novel, and rewrote about 90% of chapter five by the end of the day.

The rearranging is extensive. The last draft had forty-two chapters, and upon rereading, I found I could consolidate several of them. For example, chapters five, six, and eight of the last draft are now chapter five, and chapters seven, nine, and ten will be chapter six by the end of tomorrow.

I'm so excited.