I'm so proud to announce that tonight I powered through the editing of 2 chapters! Even wilder, this was in the space of three 30 minute sessions.

About a week ago I discovered "sprints" on Twitter, where someone initiates it and then whoever wants to join in writes or edits for an hour and comes back with their results.

I procrastinated from editing for hours today, until it was almost midnight. Finally I decided to do one of these sprints by myself, announcing it on Twitter for the fun of it. I was surprised to get through 8/13 pages. I thought, hey, if I do another one at the start of the next hour, I should be able to finish it. I did, and because I had time left, I started on the next chapter, getting through 6/12 pages. After another hour or so of procrastination, I set the 30min timer again and finished the chapter.

Crazy!

Now, to be fair, in these sessions I mostly read/skimmed over the work and put markers for paragraphs or sections that needed to be removed, with just a few changes to wording. But I also managed to catch an inconsistency, one perk of doing quick editing.

I think this is helping me with big-picture editing, which will play a big part for me as once I'm through this draft, I'll be going through and adding things — one or two chapters, and maybe a scene here and there. I think it's good that I've done the cutting and line-editing of the earlier chapters, because they needed it, but now I can actually get to the end of these edits soon enough so I have plenty of time to add in the things I want and double-check the tightening.

I'm sure the 30 minute sprints will help me get through the other kinds of edits as well.

Especially since this month my friend and I are going to be doing productivity sessions. Which are basically when we both sit down and work on just our projects for an hour, and later, another hour, etc.

Just the fact that I know now I can get to the end soon, just having removed what needs to be cut, gives me ridiculous amounts of hope and excitement about what comes after as that's when I get to start creating again — exploring the less explored areas, searching for any chapters that could possibly be added, and as I've read recently as a tool for adding to the plot:
Finding a place where the characters overcame their obstacle too easily (or it could have been harder) and then making it harder for them and raising the stakes.

My simple interpretation of this was, Find somewhere they succeeded and make them fail.

I have some exciting news on the way. (Exciting for me, anyway, and if you might read the book at some point, it's good news for you.) For now, I can safely say that Aundes Aura will be released in 2013.