It’s NaNoWriMo time, after all, and most of my writerly friends are charging ahead with their writing abandon. You’re all doing so great, too! I can’t wait to hear about your progress throughout the month.
I piked on NaNo this year; I’ve been way too caught up editing TDM, and since the original deadline I set myself was to have a solid second edit finished by late November, I decided it was time to get down to business.
Cue InSecDraMo! Barb Riley of Written Not With Ink blogged about her November plans, coining InSecDraMo, or Individual Second Draft Month.
I already had my blog post all written out for today, too, but Barb inspired me. It’s pretty exciting to see others hitting the second draft with me this month, so I figured I should spread the word. As I commented on her blog, I have been trying very hard to edit in proper order, start to finish, but it’s just not happening. Every day, I start reading from a chapter earlier, to make sure the edits flow on correctly. Every few scenes, I cross-reference something earlier in the story. This is a really intensive edit, but I am loving it.
Something interesting I noted: I’m also adding a huge amount of words. Normally, my edits cut, cut, cut. Sure, I’m doing plenty of that still, but I am writing a phenomenal amount on top of those cuts. I think it has a lot to do with how ridiculously fast I churned out the first draft of TDM. It just flew out of me in five short weeks, and now that I’m into a complicated edit, I’m adding in all the delicious, necessary details that fill in for the reader what my brain already knew during drafting. So far, I’ve bumped the word count by 1,000 words per chapter. Wow.
All this talk of editing is getting me super excited to get back into it! That has to be a good sign. Honestly, I love this story so much, I can’t even tell you.
Good luck to all NaNo-ers, and especially to my fellow InSecDraMo-ers, too!
~A
The Fane 
Woo hoo! Another InSecDraMo-er! Thanks so much for the shout out, Ashlee. It’s so cool to hear others are buckling down and banging out the edits. Whether it’s first or second draft… the point is that we’re working hard, babay! We’ll have to check back with each other at the end of the month.Good luck to you. 🙂
I know! I love that you have other commenters doing the edit thing at the same time, too. It makes a person realise why things like NaNo really catch on – there’s an exciting sense of community and shared goals when we all agree to do the same thing for a month! Best of luck with your edits! 😀
~A
Cool! I love that idea. I’m editing too, although it’s probably a 3rd or 4th draft for me. I’m not going in order, but I am hitting the pavement pretty hard, so I’m right there with you!
Awesome! You go, Annie! Check back in at the end of the month (I’ll be blogging about it 😉 ) and let me know far you’ve gotten! 😀
~A