I can’t believe that we are already past the halfway point of August. This summer has flown by and I haven’t had any spare time to think, let alone work on my blog. I thought I’d come online to do a short update on things. I hope everyone else’s summer is going okay. Lots of stuff going on in the world, I know, so I hope all that are reading this are doing well!
I have been trying to put all and any spare time to spending on my work-in-progress. I can’t believe how much time it takes to work on edits/re-writes compared to writing the original draft of a book! If there are any other writers out there, I would love to know if this is always the way it goes. I am hoping that as I write more books and more short stories, the actual writing gets better in the process so that the second draft doesn’t take so long. Seriously, I wrote my first draft in 6 months. I was naive in the beginning and thought that I would be able to do edits and rewrites within 3 months. Wow, was I ever wrong. I am currently working into Chapter 28 out of 45. My original manuscript had something like 365 pages, and I am currently on page 196. So barely past the halfway point. I started this second draft back in May (or was it April sometime?).
I suppose that is only 4 months or so, isn’t it. Why does it feel like it’s taking so much longer? I know that I had set the goal that I would be done this second draft before August 1, as I wanted to start sending out queries for it by now. I was hoping to be starting my second book (which I believe will involve aliens or something from the unknown at least). That is assuming I don’t decide to write one of my other book ideas by the time I get this monstrosity over. I have various ideas, some just plain horror and others are more along the lines of dystopia thrillers. I’m looking forward to writing them at least. Assuming I can ever get this second draft done. I also have been realizing that I’ll likely need at least one more draft, as I want to at least find someone to proofread …
Hopefully it won’t take longer than Draft 1 to get over Draft 2, and then hopefully I can hire someone to help with Draft 3. As I wrote in a previous post, I tend to suffer from nightmares, so they have been fueling my book ideas since I decided to finally go for it and start writing novels. Something that I have always wanted to do, but figured I would never be good at it. I’m not sure why it took me until a pandemic and the age of 35 to realize that, but here we are!
Okay, my mind is starting to become sporadic, which likely is difficult to read. Ha. I should note, I have been swamped at work during the week. I have taken on more responsibilities than I usually would be involved in due to people quitting and going on maternity leave, so that has made it that much harder to concentrate on my writing in the evening and I think it has put me in a bit of a scatter brained state. I would love to get back into getting up early in the morning again, but I have been going through some insomnia episodes which makes waking up at 5:30 am impossible! Instead, I have started getting back into exercise and eating more greens, so here’s hoping that it actually helps me sleep better. That is my ultimate goal this month – trying to figure out how to make my sleep better so that I have more energy during the day. However, that definitely cuts into the time that I can spend writing and working on a blog, so that is why my site has been rather quiet lately.
So, I guess I should try to wrap up this post with something of use or something? I will say that I have learned that watching TV or looking at my phone before bed does actually completely trash my sleeping patterns. I have also been cutting back on alcohol and gluten in the hopes that my body doesn’t have to work as hard on digestion at night. I try to stop eating at least 3 hours before bed and I am trying to switch to reading a book (that I didn’t write) for at least 30 minutes before bed. Those things do seem to help me with the falling asleep faster part. I think I need to increase my exercise program more if I want to be able to stay asleep though. That is something I will have to report on another time, as I still haven’t figured out the sleeping through the night part of it yet. Tonight I will try staying up later than usual and see if that forces my body to stay asleep longer… My watch tells me that I am getting in some “deep sleep”, but my body hasn’t been able to have more than 20 minutes of REM sleep in a long time. REM sleep, they say, is when the nightmares come (well dreams if you aren’t like me). So this lack of REM may interrupt my horror writing! I must get that fixed post-haste!
(Sorry, watched a Doctor Who episode the other day… the one with Charles Dickens… ha)
Thanks for reading!
K. D. Kulpa 