07 March 2018

Securely Insecure (or Insecurely Secure?)

It's the first Wednesday of the month, which means it's the posting day for the Insecure Writer's Support Group! Click here to learn more and sign up!


It happened again! I went a whole month without a blog post! Bad! I haven't even been reading other people's blogs. Double bad! I don't even really have a good excuse besides laziness (or maybe just being tired).

At the very least, I thought I'd write a post just to brag about how I managed to see all nine Best Picture nominees before the Oscars this past Sunday. Well, I guess I'm bragging about it now! It helps that I live above a movie theater and my husband's friend is in SAG and lent us some screeners (shhhhh just don't tell anyone). I really liked all nine, which is unexpected. But they were all good and deserved the nomination in my opinion. Just don't ask me to rank them! You can probably guess my heavily biased I've read the book like three or four times favorite...if you pay attention to my usual nonsense 'round here.

Anyway, I'm rambling again. On to the insecurity!

Actually, you know what? I'm not really feeling that insecure lately (besides the not blogging thing). Well, I'm not fully secure either. At last month's post time, I was still stuck on Chapter 13 of my third draft. It was definitely grueling, but I got through it! In the last draft, this chapter was 3 1/2 pages. Now it's 8 1/3! I think it came out so much better than before.

And guess what happened after that? I FINISHED CHAPTER 14, TOO!

Ok, so this isn't happening at the speed of light, but it's much faster than my usual pace. So now I'm on Chapter 15, which I haven't looked at in a couple days but once I actually sit down and do it, shouldn't take too long (yeah, yeah, we've heard that before, Sarah). I'm actually surprised at how much I've had to change as I'm writing this draft. It's a lot of new stuff.

What I am a bit insecure about is that the closer I get to the last third of the book, the more work will be needed. I basically have to completely rewrite that last third, minus a couple scenes (maybe just one, actually). I thought editing the first two thirds would be easy, and I was so, so wrong. I already know that last third will be difficult, so it'll probably turn out to be impossible. Or maybe it'll be the opposite and be surprisingly easy. I can dream, right?

Does editing ever turn out to be harder (or easier) than you expected? Did you see any of the Best Picture nominees?