Oops, I’m late.  The Linky post for the September 3, 2011 report never came through my Google reader, only an 8/31 post that yielded a 404 error.

Turns out the ROW80 Linky was there on the blog all along.  :::face/palm:::  I understand now what happened and it’s my own fault for relying 100% on Google reader, knowing how it is.

So, I only have one goal left and it has a publisher imposed deadline of 9/19.  I panicked when I double-checked the schedule and saw this date.  For some reason, I though the MS was due in October.  I did what I had to do and that was sit down and make a schedule.  I computed how many chapters I needed to do by each Saturday between now and 9/19 and how that spaced out in terms of doable quantities on work days vs. weekends.  (Yes, I am a numbers and goals and metrics gal; it’s what I do for a living.)  The pace is brisk and intense, but I’ll make it.  My Saturday milestone was 14 cumulative chapters and, by golly, I hit it.  After adding another 5 yesterday, I’m almost at the halfway mark and 100% on schedule.  🙂

I’m still using Autocrit (great online program I highly recommend for self-editing).  Be warned though.  All the red text you might see when you run a chapter through Autocrit dialysis can be disheartening.  My first passes normally look like this:

The above example is actually not as bad as many of my other chapters, with a “mere” 46 removals required.

Autocrit can also encourage though.  I got to the love scene, chapter 19, and first pass through Autocrit, as expected, was bloody, worse than the example above.  Rather than examine each exception as I normally do, I decided to rewrite the whole chapter.  I made it much better.  I ran it through Autocrit which returned only…drumroll….3 or 4 tiny droplets of blood and those were mostly -ly adverbs I ended up deleting.  I’d never had so little red on a chapter before.  This can only mean I’ve become a better writer since I first wrote the novel in 2009 OR I’m just really good at love scenes.  😉  Or maybe it’s a combination of the two.  Don’t know, don’t care, I’ll take my encouragement in whatever package it presents itself in.

Sorry to drone on.  I originally thought this would be my shortest report evah whereas it’s one of the longest.

My cumulative statistics are on my ROW80-3 page.

The Linky site lists other participants’ progress reports.  Give them some encouragement too.