Goals for October

New month, new phase of the book, new goals!

First off, I'm not setting an hours goal for this month. I feel like I'm in a good groove with carving out enough time to write, and the nature of the work I need to do this month doesn't lend itself to tracking time. However, November is always very challenging month schedule-wise for me, so I'll probably reinstate the hours goal then.

True to form, I've made a ridiculously detailed 12-step revision plan, with time estimates for each step. Some of these are concrete allowances, as in "I will not spend more than x number of days doing this", while two are much more uncertain, as in "I think two weeks is enough for this, but it's hard to say until I really get in there, and if takes more time than that I am completely at peace with it."

So! Step 1 is to go back and fix/add all the little things specific things that need to be fixed or added. I  have a file in Scrivener (have I mentioned yet that I wrote this book in Scrivener? OMG I LOVE IT. I'm shaking my head at myself for clinging to Word for so long) called "to add", and as little or big changes occur to me as I write, I make note of them there. I took time to fix a bunch of these as the draft progressed, but I still have a to-do list of leftovers.

The list is divided into the categories. One category is things I know I need to change in some way, but either I'm not sure exactly where to do it, or it's an ongoing thing I'd need to read the whole draft to address. The other category is things I can pinpoint the scene in which the change needs to happen.

For instance, and using actual verbatim examples from the list:

"You need to dial down what a dick Paget is." This is category one. I need to take a look at all this character's dialogue in every scene he appears in and make him a bit less loathsome. That's clearly a job for the read-through.

"In the Yule ball scene, mention the approaching centennial." This is category two. I know exactly where the change needs to happen, so there's no reason to not just go and do it now.

I've given myself three days to fix all the category two items, as well as spellchecking, exporting, formatting, and printing out a copy of the draft to read later. I started with 10 category two items on the list this morning, and am now down to 6. A few of the remaining ones are meatier changes that involve rewriting chunks of scenes and/or adding multiple paragraphs, so I'm not expecting to fly through them. And spellchecking is always way more time-consuming than I think it's going to be.

If all goes according to plan, I'll be ready for beta readers by Thanksgiving! That seems nuts, in a good way.