Today I passed the 50% mark on the new book and that is something to celebrate. For a while there, I thought I was going to scrap this book like I have the other failed starts before it. If you’re a regular reader, you know that I was flirting with changing it from 3rd person to 1st. And for about a week I did just that. I started from scratch and rewrote three scenes in first person. And… I hated it. Good heavens, was it awful.

I would still like to experiment with 1st person, but I’ve given up on the idea for this book. Instead, I tweaked the first chapter, edited the second, changed some details of the male main character and one of the secondary characters to amp up the dramatic tension. The best part of these changes was the motivation they gave me to write. Parking one’s backside in the chair and getting words on the page is the challenge. Anything that makes it easier is a huge benefit.

My new goal is to have a workable 1st draft, one I’ll send beta readers, by December. I think that’s realistic. That’s dependent on no self-editing until I have a complete work. I’m bad about this. I’ll rewrite the same chapter ten times before I write the next and that is killing my progress. Skipping ahead isn’t working either. I need to keep going moment by moment, chapter by chapter to avoid losing the plot.

We’ll see how the next few weeks go, but I’m optimistic I can meet that goal and maybe by Christmas I can start posting a few chapters.