Assessing Progress.

One issue that I’m having as I work my way through the slog that is my revision process is assessing how far I’ve come. Or, more accurately, how far I have left to go.

I’m not a big fan of setting specific goals since I don’t have a good track record of making them. But I do have the goal of getting this book through the second revision, and the best way to make sure this happens is to have things that look and feel like goals.

It seemed reasonable that the revision process could be completed in a four week period, which suggests that covering a quarter of it every week would be a good pace. Maintaining that pace would ensure that I complete the task in the allotted time. Even if I don’t make the specific goals, simply trying to keep up with the pace should be good enough.

Choosing A Metric.

That’s the issue I’m having.

Chapters are one way to gauge progress, but not a good one. For instance, this novel is currently divided into thirty-nine chapters which aren’t all the same size. I’m about to start Chapter 21, which puts me at about 54% on a week when I aimed to be at 75%. So I’m far behind the curve.

Pages are another way. The Old Man – revision one, anyway – consists of 219 pages, and I’m on page 141. Using that as a metric has me at 64%. Still behind the curve.

‘Discrepancies‘ – what I’m calling those notes for improvements – everything from punctuation and misspelling through to major complaints. I have a notebook filled with 1,706 of them, and the next one will be number 1,216. Which puts me 71% of the way through.

The Truth of the Matter.

I’m choosing to think that it’s not entirely important which metric you use so long as you use one. One metric is much more ‘lumpy’ than another, but a gauge is a gauge. Provided you’re willing to stick to one particular metric, it won’t matter beyond some weeks being harder work than others.

The Week Just Past.

Every hour that could be spared was spent trying to push forward. It’s actually very deflating to see that, even using the most positive number available, I still didn’t hit 75%. This is in part due to feeling I was working extra super hard at it and thinking that I might get the revision process completed by Wednesday, the day when I reintroduce… …beer!

…I’m thinking of running for a Supreme Court seat…

Up Next…

Well, next week is the kids’ Spring Break week, so the time available to work on this will most definitely be impinged. On top of that, the second half of the week is looking nice and there’s going to be a bee in a bonnet about trying to push ahead with our mini-barn (I’ve been told not to call it a ‘rabbit barn,’ because it’s going to be a multi-functional agricultural building and not just for rabbits) so time will get spent on that too.

The far end of the week see’s the loving wife sauntering off to Atlanta for a couple of days shopping. Because, you know, what I really need is more stuff around the house for me to trip over.

This week’s only definites, then, are:

• that I’ll have precious few hours to commit, but my goal is still to complete this revision by the week’s end. That’s so the following week I can restructure it into a more sensible set of chapters and then port it into Scrivener so I can have it in the format my Alpha Reader is requesting.
• that come what may… beer on Wednesday.

It’s good to have goals, even if they’re never achieved…

Have a great week everyone!

Categories: Revision, The Old Man, Work Update