Birth of a Novel 11/29/12

It's been a very uplifting week for me. Since the last Birth of a Novel post I've pulled out my two year old 50K Nano draft of Search for Knowledge--the sequel to The Magic Wakes. I remember it being complete and utter trash. My plan was to look through it for anything I might be able to salvage for the rewrite.

Well, I started reading through it a little before Thanksgiving, and I'm happy to report that I was able to keep 37K of it! That stuff is still really rough, but the ideas are good and the character actions still fit in with who they are at the end of book one. I wrote a new beginning, and I now have a better planned goal for the second book in my series. All in all, I feel better prepared to sit down and finish this draft than I did a month ago.

Now I just need to fill in some gaps, switch from 1st person to 3rd, and finish the story. Then I'll be ready to let some of my early readers give me some feedback.

Okay, on to concrete goals!


Last Week's Goals:
1. Write at least 2500 words on Search for Knowledge. It's not a lot, but I still have some unpacking and Thanksgiving cooking to do. The plan is to just get started again. I did write a few scenes, but mostly I cut and pasted the salvageable stuff from the early version. So that counts as a start, right?
2. Finish unpacking and decorate for Christmas. We always do inside before Thanksgiving so it looks beautiful and festive when we sit down to eat, and outside after. I am unpacked! Decorations are up, and we survived a wonderful T-day with lots of food and relaxation. I'll try and get a video tour of my new place up next week.
3. Actually visit the other people that signed up for this thing I've started! Well, most of us didn't do anything last week, and now Mr. Linky is being stupid. Does anyone have a better linky widget that's free?

This Week's Goals:
1. Continue the good exercise habits I've started by going to the gym and watching what I eat.
2. Fill in the gaps between the new start of Search for Knowledge and the salvaged section. This should equate to two or three chapters.
3. Write 4 more of the guest blogs I've planned for my tour in addition to the ones I've started. I currently have six of them completed and six in draft form. That means I should have 16 completed by next Thursday.

How about you? What are your goals for this week?

Now I'm off to see how to fix Mr. Linky for the others in the blog hop.