I did get my homework finished and turned in last night. But then I was up for an extra hour, probably coming down off the adrenaline rush of doing all that. I had planned on sleeping in to account for staying up late.

Nope. I felt my watch buzz with a notification for me to stand up (it thought I should have already been up even though I turned off the alarm). I opened an eye to see what it was telling me and saw sunlight. That was it. Night over.

On the bright side, I felt pretty good. I slept solidly last night during the time I did, so I was ready to get up. Now I’m ready to go to bed, but that’s probably a good thing so I can get back to my regular schedule.

I am still working through my priorities list. I might have finished the outline today for the newest series I’m working on. A couple of days ago, and I think I mentioned this, I saw something happen in the story that I didn’t remember writing and it made me pretty excited. I’m now to the part of the first book where I felt things go a little astray when I was writing it. I figured I’d go back and rework it when I had gotten farther along and knew what to do.

Well, I think I’m about there. It means I’m going to throw out about 15,000 words (60 manuscript pages), but I’m excited by how the story is going to redevelop. All the basics were/are there in the draft, but they were shadows of what they need to become. Instead of my main character being a foggy, unknown peril, this will show the character (and the reader) just how dangerous this is.

But right now I’m at an awkward borderline. I skipped far ahead in the manuscript today to see how my character fairs in the long run, but there’s an event in the middle which I need to read through to see how it goes. I think I killed this side character later, and that right now he was released unharmed. I’m certain that is how it goes right now. I have enough of the event leading in that I need to see how it pans out so I can adequately determine where to lop the story apart and start redrafting. If I lose a little of the scene I just finished, no big deal. If I add on another chapter of what’s written, then I’ll have to work the scene after that a little harder to do some redirecting. It still won’t be bad.

Honestly, this whole part right here might be the reason I bogged down during writing the second book. I knew I needed to go back and reread it all. So my 15,000 words might be even more if I end up throwing out what I’ve written of book 2 so far. At this point, I don’t think that’s going to happen because I believe book 1 will still end about the same point for the characters as I have it now. That means the little bit of a gap I have between books 1 and 2 will stay the same, and their mission at the start of book 2 will not change. At least not significantly. Since I have no idea what book 3 is going to be about, I still might have to come back to book 1 and make changes anyway.

It’s why I’m being a bit secretive about this series. I knew I was going to write it in one chunk. I didn’t want to have it like the Sacred Knight series which had years go by in-between books. Or had other books released in-between books. Tangled Magic, Walk the Path — yeah, those ones. (grin)

Also did some recording today. I have really fallen down on the audiobook narration. It just hasn’t gone well for a myriad of reasons, most of which leave the finger pointing at me. I’ve learned a few things though. Going forward will be different. But mostly I just need to get myself into a disciplined schedule. I might even try going back to doing the audio editing in the morning like I use to do. It’s not something I want to do for the long term, but for a bit until I can do something better, this might be an answer for me. I’ve just got to get moving and back in the habit. Then I can readjust.

That among a few other things. I still just need to find a way to have 36 hours in a day. That might really help. Heck, I’d be happy with 32. An extra 8 hours in a day. Hmm, maybe an Excel spreadsheet and I need to look at the possibilities! (LOL! That shows how tired I am.)

But, it’d be fun!

Training my watch to not wake me up might be the challenge though.