February Sweeps - Day 266

Okay, Saturday.  As is a semi-tradition, I might hit the library today, once I finish my . . . what am I supposed to be doing today?

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In October: 3620

Push-ups Today: 77
Push-ups In October: 1587

Still wanting a project to work on, I emailed myself the full "Hatchling" document, and drove over to the library to work on it, format it, look it over, and see how close to the magical 40,000 words that ostensibly make up a novel.

Well, it was in pretty bad shape.  I assembled the daily writing sessions into a fair timeline, and went about making it all fit.  There were innumerable ____ (blank lines) where I was supposed to fix things or fill in the appropriate word, and that can sometimes be impossible without the context of "what was I thinking when I wrote this?"*  

There was one section where the main girl--Talia--was suddenly referred to as Katianna, who I believe was the main character in the Halloween decoration story I started writing around that time, and I was embarrassed about that.  Also, Talia's dad did indeed have a name in a scene I hadn't noticed before--Doug--and I had to decide whether to leave it as Bert (as I wrote on Thursday) or change it to Doug (as I wrote in August).  And there were parts where the hatchling was referred to as "it" instead of "him," so I tried to swap those out too.  

Even worse, there was one section that appeared twice in the book, and I thought I was losing my mind, because the wording was different from what I had just typed.  This is what an editor does for a living, I suspect.

To my surprise, they announced that the library would be closing in ten minutes--I had been formatting and working on this manuscript for nearly two hours, and had only gotten two-thirds through it.  So, I quickly went through the last chapters and at least formatted them to be the same as what had come earlier, and tried to fix any new typos I could find.  When I finally closed the document in case they killed my computer again, the document was sitting at 37,326 words.  

That's creeping closer to novel length, though not quite there yet.

And then I'll have to start planning the cover art.  Sigh.

Words Today: 1405
Words In October: 21,604

*I much prefer when I write something and then (BETTER WORD) after it, as I explained yesterday.