I haven’t done a good job of keeping up with these. This week I started the third draft of my manuscript. I’m three chapters in. Not a whole lot for a week of writing, I’ll admit.

The difference between the third draft and the first two is that this time I can’t/won’t kick the can down the road. When a part of the story stymied me previously I just told myself I’d get it in the next draft. As I’d like the manuscript to be ready for beta readers when this draft is finished, I need to solve all these lingering problems now. Thus, each chapter takes more time. Sometimes I don’t have a good answer for a problem and have to waste lots of time thinking about it.

Throughout this entire writing process, from first draft to now, I’ve gone through highs and lows of optimism and pessimism. I’m in one of the troughs now and am very pessimistic about this whole endeavor. I guess we’ll see what happens.