Status Update: Nov. 1, 2013

Another bad month for exercise, with almost the exact same profile as October, but I still lost a couple of pounds, so not a complete loss:

Fitness Summary for Sept, 2013

Exercise days: 5 days out of 30 (an average of 1.2 days/week)
Lap Swimming: 3 days (10 laps/60 minutes = 1000 meters/60 minutes, pace = 6.00*)
Land based/Bike: 2 days (8 miles/50 minutes)
Water/Land ratio: 60/40
October Weight Loss: 2 lbs.
Total Weight Loss: 15 lbs.
Avg. Blood Pressure: I forgot to measure my bp in October!  Nov. 1: 115/73
Resting Pulse-Rate: Nov. 1: 72
INR: 2.4 (range on blood-thinners is 2.0-3.0)
Glucose: 93 (<100 is target)

I had my monthly INR reading yesterday, and asked them to run a glucose test as well.  I did this because a month ago my oncologist did some labwork, and my glucose was a bit on the high side (113).  It never has been before (it's always been in the 90's) and there's a strong presence of diabetes in my family tree, so I asked for a retest this month to keep on top of things.  I fasted for this one (as you should) but hadn't for the one before, since it wasn't planned.  Luckily my reading came in at where it's always been, a very safe 93.  And even though I completely forgot to measure my blood pressure and heart-rate in Oct. the test taken today looks very good (see above).

October started with some of the respiratory issues hanging on from September, but they mostly cleared up as the month went on, so I can't blame them for most of the lack of exercise.  The real reason is that I had a very prolific month writing, and was very distracted from almost everything else.  I'm going to update that part later in this post.  Things I'm still doing for the respiratory/allergy problems:

1. Taking a 24-hour non-decongestant allergy tablet (1x daily)
2. Nasal irrigation daily (reduced from 2x to 1x daily, but 2x is always better)
3. Topical steroid nasal spray (reduced from 2x to 1x daily)
4. Albuterol inhaler (reduced from 4x to 2x daily)

The ragweed allergy season should end sometime this month, and then I'll try to go without the allergy tablet.  The problems could persist since I have cats, and the dry winter season is a problem for dust and pet allergies - we'll see what happens.

Writing Update:

Many of you know that I'm writing a children's series.  The series will span 4 years of time, with the primary characters starting out at the top end of the Middle Grade level (ages 11-12), and ending with them solidly in the Young Adult level (ages 15-16).  Because of this progression, I'm identifying it as a MG/YA/Cross-over.  This means I'm hoping the story will draw in a wide-span of readers, ranging ranging from high middle grade through young adult, with some incursion into the adult readers (due to the history/mystery elements of the story).

Books 1 and 2 are finished, however I spent the last few weeks working on what I hope is the last draft of both.  That draft is finished on book 1, and should be finished on book 2 in about 3 days.  Here's the interesting part: The last draft of book 2 should be the third draft, but the last draft of book 1 is the 17th!  Here's why:

I got the idea for the series when I first became sick, and the first draft of book 1 was written when I was experiencing some extreme brain-fuzz symptoms from chemo.  Additionally and to be honest, I had some bad writing habits that needed to be fixed.  Over the course of the 3-4 years that followed I did many drafts trying to address the many issues I thought the first draft had.  Here are some of the major changes made:

1. Reduced the core group of young characters from 8 to 6 to 5 (took 3 drafts).
2. Reduced the expository/descriptive scenes, cutting the word count by 40k (3 drafts).
3. Revised the writing to make it a more active (as opposed to passive) 3rd person voice.
4. Revised the writing to include more action scenes and dialogue (several drafts).
5. Revised the scenes where I'd deviated from the main character's POV (point of view).
6. Revised the plot structure to match a 3-act drama structure, including new elements.
7. Switched from US std. units to metric (with some caveats).
8. A whole bunch of other misc. stuff.

In short, although the basic plot remains pretty much the same, the draft 1 manuscript doesn't look anything at all like the draft 17 manuscript!  The story, down to all dramatic details, has been completely and drastically rewritten.

A better way of delineating the different drafts would have resulted in a smaller number, but I often counted editing and polishing drafts separately, when I should have included them in the revision and rewrite drafts.  Here's what a draft should constitute, in my opinion:

1. Original or revised (in some significant way) material.
2. Editing.
3. Polishing.

I suppose if I had counted the drafts this way from the start, I would have ended up with a number closer to 10-12.  That's still a lot of drafts for one work, though!

Here's an interesting tidbit: The average published author writes 4 books before they get published.  This means that a writer who is good enough to get published, usually has to write 3 or so weak novels before they refine their craft to be publishable.  Since 2-4 drafts is not unusual in a well-written novel, this means they've probably gone through somewhere between 8 and 16 drafts on the 4 books in total.  Those are learning curves.  If they weren't, the author likely wouldn't get that 4th novel published.

Strangely enough this puts me right in the average profile, except that I wrote '10-12' drafts on the same single story, rather than 2-4 drafts on 4 different stories.  I made a conscious decision to do that for 2 reasons:

1. I had already done a lot of world building, setting up the back-history of the series, and the details of each of the 4 books, as well as two related series (a prequel and a sequel - in fact I already have 1/3rd of book 1 of the prequel written).
2. I was fairly sure what my weaknesses were and wanted to eliminate them one-by-one, and see the results in one story, where the differences would stand out more clearly with each subsequent manuscript.

These last drafts for books 1 and 2 took into account feedback from 4 entities:

1. A professional editor.
2. One of my critique group members (he reviewed both full manuscripts).
3. My primary care physician (a big Harry Potter fan - he reviewed both full manuscripts).
4. My own notes.

Here's something interesting.  After spending much of the first 16 drafts taking material out, in the last draft I'm actually increasing the word count a little.  I knew I had far too much descriptive and expository narrative initially, and that it made my story-telling too passive, so the early draft objectives were largely focused on reducing this.  I think I did it so well, that I pared the book down a bit further than it should ideally be, based on a few of the insights from those above.  The material added back in clarifies and illuminates, but keeps the pace moving quickly.  I think I finally found the right medium!

Anyway, with 2 books essentially done, I'm now preparing to write the first draft of book 3.  My 3-act, detailed chapter outline is done, but I'm going to do one more rework of that to make sure I have everything there for continuity with the first 2 books, as well as for continuity for the final book that follows.  Each book has a puzzle and mystery to be solved, and in that way each book stands alone, but each of the puzzles are put together at the end, for the over-arching plot of the series.

I was hoping to get the final drafts of books 1 and 2 done, along with the final research and outline for book 3, so that I could start writing book 3 as a NaNoWriMo project.  For those of you unfamiliar with this, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and takes place every November.  It's a project for jump-starting novels, especially for authors who have a hard time gaining momentum and keeping it going on their work.  I've never taken part in it, but I would have, in an unofficial way at least, had I been ready.  I still have a few days of final draft work to do, however, as well as perhaps 1-2 weeks of additional research and outline work on book 3, which means I won't be writing the first draft of book 3 in Nov. unfortunately.  I hope to do this in December, though, if all goes well, so I suppose I can consider this December my very own NaNoWriMo project.

Here's one of the things I learned during the 17 drafts I did on book 1 that has been hugely helpful to me; Doing a detailed, chapter-by-chapter outline, based on the 3-act dramatic structure, has allowed me to do the first draft very quickly.  In fact once I finally had an outline system down that worked for me (during one of my book 1 drafts), I was able to complete a chapter a day on the first draft of book 2.  Not only did I complete the full first draft manuscript in just under 1 month (it has 29 chapters), it was in excellent shape for a first draft.  So far feedback on it has been very good - most think it's better and tighter than book 1, which is why I'm fairly certain the 3rd draft I'm currently on will be my last.  So it's unfortunate that I couldn't make the November NaNoWriMo deadline, as I think I could have finished the first draft of book 3 in that month.

Oh well, November or December - not much of a difference.  The important part is getting it right, and as book 4 (the final book) will be more complex than the others, as multiple threads come together for the over-arching conclusion, it's important that everything is correctly staged in books 1, 2, and 3.  In other words, it's more important to do it right, than do it fast.

Okay, that's my update for today.  I'll be back with more health, fitness and writing status updates throughout the month!