I’m coming down with something. Sinus, sore throat, general ooginess. Skipped my workout today — I’m doing quite well, by the way, and today was legs and abs, which is my preferred workout (harder for me to be excited about upper body and abs). Rule is, don’t work out when you’re sick. Use the energy to recuperate.
Awakened at three by a ferocious sinus headache, took stuff, went back to sleep around six-ish, and here I am. I want 2000 words of I SEE YOU by ten AM.
On HAWKSPAR yesterday, I hit my first patch of green scene, and edited twenty pages in twenty minutes. It was like sprouting wings on my fingers — it was sweet. Today, I have a yellow scene to edit, then three — count ’em, three — green scenes. And then we go orange, yellow, orange, yellow, so I know I’m not likely to make it out of that thicket today. But I’ll give it my best shot.
I only have one genuine bad patch still to get through. A few scenes beyond those mentioned already, I have a last, terrifying wall: RED, orange, orange, orange, RED, RED, orange, orange, RED, RED, yellow. Past that, it’s green as far as the eye can see — couple of autumn leaves scattered lightly across that lawn, but not many. Every one of those thicket reds, however, is a scene that doesn’t exist in any form yet, but needs to. Every one of those oranges is a scene that’s written, but where I’ll have to toss about 75-90% of what’s there and work in an equivalent amount of new material around the bit I can save — really, as much of a pain in the ass as a red scene.
Looking at my lovely little ring-bound stack of index cards, though, I can say the end truly is in sight. And that this color-coded thing was the perfect solution for getting me through this book. (WARNING: It probably would have made me think suicidal thoughts had the sucky part been at the end of the manuscript instead of the beginning — think about that before deciding to try this method for a huge overhaul of your own work.)
Anyway. Window open. Cats lounging. Pills consumed. Headache not so bad. Onward.
Oh, yes. The counts.
ISY starting count: 41,513 words
HAWKSPAR starting count: page 452 out of 951
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