Ooog. It’s after midnight, but I got a ton of work done on the novel tonight. I have the opening section pretty much right where I want it, setting up the next section where Kait and company pull a “Lost”-type situation on another world. But hey, at least they’re all friends already, unlike the strangers thrown together on the TV show.

I initially chopped out chapters 3-6, leaving me with about 40 pages of stuff, or 8k words, as I noted in my regular journal entry below. Deleting all that stuff did the trick – I was able to dive back in and add some new stuff, and cherry-pick some more wordage from my initial draft. What I’ve got now is WAY more tight and fun than my earlier, dawdling draft.

So let that be a lesson – if you ever get stuck, just start deleting. But make sure you’ve got a backup, just in case!

And now, I’ve got 70,000 words to write in 50 days. That comes out to what — 1400 words a day. Ouch! That’s about 6 pages a day. But if I can get 2 good hours in, I can make it happen. 3 pages an hour. I may just be able to finish up by Halloween. Or maybe the Day of the Dead…