The original plan was to be reaching the end of the first draft of Bringer of Light about now. That would leave me a month or so of ‘fallow time’ during which I’d revisit some short stories (and have a social life), ready to embark on the double cycle of rewrites (aka ‘rinse and repeat’) at a leisurely pace and in plenty of time for the November 30th delivery deadline.
As is often the case, Real Life, in this case the need to earn a crust between advances, has got in the way. As a result I’m about a month behind plan. I say ‘about’ because I don’t set rigid writing deadlines: though writing certainly requires discipline, I’ve found that being too demanding on myself leads to guilt over not meeting self-imposed arbitrary targets and/or putting quantity over quality. It’s all very well producing 10K of first draft in a week, but not so smart if 8K of those words end up getting cut from the final version.
So, though progress is slow, I’m looking on the bright side: the end result should hopefully require less rework.
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