Mile Marker #12: What I’m Doing During My Between-Drafts Break (Besides Playing Baldur’s Gate)
I’ll be honest — I’m playing a lot of Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m so glad my friend convinced me to download the game during a time when I don’t have any strict deadlines, otherwise I’d be in some serious trouble right now.
I’m in the middle of my two-week break between finishing the freaking first draft and starting the second draft. I leave for my next writer’s retreat on Monday morning (more on that later), at which point I’ll read my entire manuscript from start to finish and then start laying out plans for edits. I’m hoping I can START edits too, while I’m there, but it’ll depend on how quickly I get through the manuscript. I’m only in Virginia for five days, which is really 3.5 because I don’t get there until Monday afternoon and I leave early on Friday morning.
My priorities during this writing break have been:
To actually take a freaking break, and not take on additional projects just to keep myself busy.
To get serious about my graduate school applications. (I’ve narrowed it down to 12, which is still Too Many, but I’ve got time to figure it out.)
To keep applying to jobs — The perfect gig is out there!
To sleep. Just, y’know, get some good sleep. Lordt do I need it.
To read!! I’ve done a LOT of reading — The Giver by Lois Lowry, Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng, The Waterstone by Rebecca Rupp, Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo (which I stayed up until 3 last night to finish). I also started She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan, but Cy warned me it’s very heavy and I could totally tell from the first 30 pages. So I’m taking a break from that one simply because my mental health has been very wonky this past week. Lots of delightful Millennial ennui spiraling — but that’s a different blog.
I haven’t been beating myself up about all the time spent playing video games, either, because this is a true break and I genuinely deserve it. And to be honest, I’m probably going to finish this blog and jump straight back into Baldur’s Gate because I finished my work early today and I don’t have class tonight. (I’m also completely on top of my client work, so like, eat my socks, haters*.)
*I do not have any haters. My only “hater” is my monkey brain.
Speaking of class, we have our rescheduled author visit this Saturday, and then class starts up again officially for the fall/winter semester on Tuesday the 12th. I’ll be at my writer’s retreat then, which I think is kind of fun! It’s the rescheduled session on revision, which is perfectly timed since I’ll be starting my revisions then as well. I also have my one-on-one with Peter the next day (Wednesday the 13th), at which point I may ask him which 50 pages to send in because, oh yeah, my final workshop is the following Tuesday, the 19th.
I’m sharing my workshop day with my closest friend from class, which I think is kinda cool!!
This final push to the second draft is going to be pretty hectic. By my math, to get a 130,000-word manuscript polished in a little less than 4 months (yikes, it’s really going to be 3 by the time I get started), I have to get through 36,000+ words per month. So, like 8-10 chapters per month, for a book that landed around 36 chapters. (34 and an epilogue, and I guess also a prologue, so I was right the first time lol.)
Whew this is gonna be an interesting end of the year — but I’m excited for everything the rest of 2023 will bring, and hoping for a lot of good, good things!
I might come back and update here before Monday, but if I don’t, I haven’t forgotten the blog — I’m just trying to ACTUALLY take advantage of this break before I hit the ground running (sprinting, really) on Monday.
Til next time,
Mags