This has been a relatively productive writing day. I am at the point in the revision where I am getting into the tough stuff–the heart of the conversation that shapes what the next thirty chapters will be. I’m worried about it, because I poured a ton of character development into these first 32,000 words and 72 pages and if I cannot get this section right, the book will fall flat and make no sense. It’s slowing me down in a good way, but I need to power through this for real. I guess I’m worried the most about the next steps and what they are and if there is enough there to constitute a novel. I’m going to legitimately need to cut 30K which is like another 70 pages of text. On the other hand, I already added 10K to the first twelve chapters, which argues I can make up for the lost text by writing better stuff.
That means I’ll need to grind to make the deadline. I need to get back to the 500 words an hour schedule at minimum. At that rate alone it will take me at least 100 hours to get to where the novel needs to be. Realistically I’ll be looking at more like 140 hours at 500/hour, and that means a minimum of 5 hours a day to get it done mid June. In other words, I gotta get faster now. 500 words an hour is a nice pace if you can afford it. I cannot if I am going to make my deadlines. I need to be putting out 3K every day from here on out to get to where I want to be when I want to be there.
So, it is grind time.