Day 155: I finished editing volume 1!

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NaNoWriMo is here! And … I haven’t worked on my manuscript yet. I’m still trying to finish editing volume 1 in my series so I can send it to my proofreader this week, so I’ll probably do that today.

Yesterday I was surprisingly busy. I did some brainstorming for my Hawaii Contemporary Romance series, which took most of the day. Unfortunately I also had some IBS issues yesterday so I wasn’t quite as focused as I would have liked to be.

However, I came up with a vague outline of events. I’ll have to do Snowflake steps on the story and then start outlining. Luckily I’d already done some characterization on it earlier, so I didn’t have to do much of that.

Today, I had to take some time to research stock photos for my cover designer for one of the Hawaii Contemporary Romance novellas, since the cover is due in December, I think. I have two concerns about it—I found a few stock photos of wedding kimonos, but I don’t know how my cover designer is going to make it look like “Contemporary Romance.” Also, my heroine is actually taller than my hero, and a lot of the photos of Japanese wedding couples have the woman much shorter than the man. I’m counting on you, Dineen Miller!

I also took some time to check social media and got interested in a discussion about ARC readers and the wording you can use when asking for them, and what the rules are on Amazon for ARC reader reviews. It’s more complicated than I had thought!

I got a late start today and then all that non-writing work took so much time! I’m off to do edits now.

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I realized today that I take shorter breaks if I don’t leave my desk. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was. Unfortunately, it’s not healthy for my back to stay at my desk, plus I usually need to go to the bathroom when that 90 minute timer goes off.

But I have been finding it great to set a timer for 90 minutes and do my editing. A 90 minute spurt is just right, where I get a lot done and can focus and I’m not too tired, and even if my break is long, I feel better having done 90 minutes of work beforehand.

I’m also still suffering from a bit of discomfort from my IBS today, but so far it hasn’t affected my self-editing as long as I’m at my sitting desk. It also seems to be less uncomfortable if I have something in my stomach, so I’ve been using that as an excuse to snack a lot. :)

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I got about 3 hours of editing done, and I’m past the 3/4 mark on my book! I only have 4 chapters and an epilogue to go. I think I’ll go make dinner and then try to get the rest of it done after dinner.

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I stayed up late, but I finished editing volume 1! Yay! I also compiled it from Scrivener into a .docx file and sent it off to my proofreader, along with The Gentleman Thief.

Wow I’m tired! But tomorrow I’ll continue with my cycling and start editing volume 2, then start work on volume 3. Unfortunately, I still have to do blocking for volume 3 so I won’t be able to start writing right away, but if I’m lucky I’ll get some words down tomorrow.

Editing: Time spent: 6 hours, 22 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 0 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 2 hours, 58 minutes

My takeaway for today: A 90 minute spurt works great for self-editing.

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