August 25, 2019
It’s been several months since my last post and I am STILL working on Rewrite #4. I have had a hard time finding time to write and trying to combine scenes so I can eliminate a full day in my narrative, thus moving the murder up in the timeline. At least now I am past that hurdle. I am about half way through with the rewrite.
I am very grateful to my youngest daughter for reading the manuscript and drawing a red line through all of the “bad” words. This helps in case I want to submit it to a squeaky clean publisher like Hallmark. (Wouldn’t that be awesome?)
For years I have been writing during my lunch breaks at work and, while that’s still a good plan, it isn’t enough time and it’s difficult to lug my laptop to and from work. It’s better if I can take pieces of the manuscript to edit with a red pen or take a stack of index cards to write down story ideas.
I have let a lot of things get in the way of trying to rewrite. Summer time, family events, work, procrastination etc. Finding time was difficult and I thought maybe I could write in the evenings after dinner but that never did pan out. So… now I have come up with a new plan……. getting up early.
A lot of the big time authors I’ve studied say that they get up at four in the morning and write for several hours. David Baldacci says he used to work full time and write from 10pm until 2am every night. I thought, “That’s crazy, I need my sleep.”
I avoided getting up early for as long as I could. But this week I bit the bullet. I’ve been getting up at 5:30am, the same time as my husband. While he gets ready for work I do an hour of writing. Now I’m thinking maybe I should get up at 5:00am and have an hour and a half of writing before I have to go to work myself.
So, that’s my new normal. Waking up early. It’s a crazy idea, I know, but it seems to be working.
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