24 - 4265

As much as I'm enjoying One A Day, it had near-enough replaced my fiction writing. Since starting, I'd only written one short piece and that was it. I love the fact that I'm writing something new every day, but I was using One A Day as an excuse not to get back to the slog of rewriting my novel.

Last Summer I gave myself a target. From June until September I planned to write 500 words a day and end up with 60,000 words at the end of September. I finished September with 59,451 words and a very rough, largely forced first draft of a novel. Though I hit my target, I'd often gone days without writing anything then caught up at the end of the week. One week I wrote literally nothing. Another I wrote near-enough 7,000 words.

The plan was to then read over each of the twenty-one chapters throughout October, taking notes on what needed to be improved, changed, deleted etc. That I managed easily enough in a similar fashion.

The final part of the plan was to spend November, December and January redrafting two chapters or so a week. This was a foolish idea but the plan was to have it finished by February 3rd - today. Why today? Well, it's my friend's birthday today and seeing as she wants to be the first person to read my novel, it seemed as good as any date to aim for.

The end of the year came and I'd rewritten five chapters. The end of January came and I'd rewritten one more chapter. So today I forced myself to write - a strategy that rarely works for me. Today, it did.

I redrafted all of Chapter Seven and part of Eight. A grand total of 4,265 words, which is fantastic by my standards. Now I doubt this is the start of some huge push that will see the novel rewritten by the end of March, even, but I know I can do it. I'm going to keep forcing myself. It won't always work. But if I do it enough, I should get back into the swing of it. Hopefully.