I'm busy reading chapters and outlines for the novel workshop in March. I have eleven of those to read and then I have two complete novels to read. There must nearly be fifteen hundred manuscript pages to read. Whew!

Right now I feel like I'm burning through the chapters and outlines. And I need to, too. My employment starts up again on March 1st. The workshop begins on March 12, so the more reading I do now while I'm not working, the better.

My novel is in the hands of the other participants. At one point during RadCon weekend, when I was talking to Patrick Swenson, I realized I had completed a second draft of my novel. And an even greater realization--I was minimizing this accomplishment. I had wanted it to be done and GREAT when I submitted it to the workshop, true, but I've never written a novel. This is a learning experience and I've come a long way with just completing a first draft. This second draft is just a step in my progress. The only way I can move forward is by looking at it in this way.

So this second draft came to 50,000 words, down from 89,000 words first draft. There's a couple of reasons for this. The first draft was a discovery draft and as I was figuring things out, I'd go down avenues that became dead-ends. Also, sometimes I re-do paragraphs as I go along, so words were cut there, too.

This novel needs more words. There's some logic problems. When you're dealing with time travel there will be logic problems. One thing I'd like to try on the next novel is to write with an outline. With an outline, perhaps I can fill those logic holes (if any, but most likely) by using an outline.

I'm just trying to find my novel writing "process."