First Draft
“Limering”. Around 67,000 words. I discovered about a week ago what happened during the big mystery at the heart of the story, so I’ll be able to end it eventually.
Editing
“Wind/Water/Salt”. I’d like to say I got fed up and just finished the second draft, but alas that didn’t happen. I think for July I will just finish the damn thing. There are about 110 pages to go, so that's reasonable. Let's just say July won't end until this draft is done!
What happens is I go along, and I find something big that needs changing -- a character needs to be somewhere else than where I have her, and this has impacts across various chapters until things right themselves and I have a few clean sections. In order to make this stuff work, I have to gut some chapters, and then I just write these dreadful one- or two-sentence fillers. "Her hands were still in shackles. He had the tools lying around, and so he cut them off." And move along. But I have managed to cut a few thousand words out, which is good. Though I feel like a slave to the 3-POV organizing principle I started with.
Scott Westerfield had an essay up on the NaNoWriMo website about revising, and how this is a great chance to outline (or re-outline) your novel, and that’s what I’ve been doing, so I guess I might be going about this the right way.
Connecting
--
Circulating
--
Knitting
“Kaffeklatsch” (self-designed). Finished the second sleeve so I could use the DPNs on a sock. I never started that sock. I am a couple of inches from done this garment.
“Ceremonial Armour” (Kaffe Fassett, knit from a photo). So, I started the first sleeve, but then after two inches I ripped most of it out and ordered more yarn. I didn’t have the right color to finish this project. I’ve knitted back to about where I was before with the new yarn, and it looks much better now.
“St. Anthony’s Ribbon” (self-designed). I decided the reason I never work on this is that it’s not working, so I ripped out to the first row and added more stitches to the cuff. This sucked, because the sleeve was up to the elbow (8/13 done). But it was too tight and I would never have worn the wretched thing that way, so I guess it’s all for the good. Sometimes the reason I don’t work on something is that my subconscious knows it’s not going to work, and I started this in December, and it really hadn’t progressed. I’ve got 5/13 of the sleeve done again now.
I had intended to sew a skirt and a dress and start another dress (too ambitious, perhaps) but then the boy had the incident with the police, and I had to make him something to carry his arrows in instead. So, I did a leather-working project that took many, many hours, and then worked a bit on the skirt.