Okay, where were we? Oh, yes.

Tuesday was the first big test of the new writing regime – a full day of work plus running plus writing – and from a pure word count it was pretty successful. I added another 1200 words (679 of which were salvage) which took the manuscript up to 4599 words and pushed me over the 5% point.

Wednesday was a day off – both from running and from writing. Instead, I spent the evening on a ‘team building event’ at the brewery where Granville Island Brewing create their limited edition beers followed by a meal at The Sandbar. Delicious fun, but not conducive to writing.

Thursday was equally unproductive, at least from a writing point of view but this time without the convenient excuse. I did go running but by the time we got back I was too tired to face the keyboard.

I did decide to change my writing regime, though. The original plan was to go to the gym in the mornings, then work, then run and write in the evenings. I decided on Thursday that was a bit too optimistic. For some reason it’s a lot easier to get up and exercise after being at work all day than to sit down at a keyboard and craft fiction. Who knew?

So, I’ve decided that I’ll kick off the day with an hour or so of writing (which is what I did with the original draft of the novel) and then run and go to the gym in the evenings. This is during the week; weekends will be running and gym in the morning, writing in the afternoon or evening. Trying to balance work, running and writing with any kind of consistency was always going to be difficult but I think this is a better approach.

Friday (the first day of the new new writing regime) I wrote another 509 words taking me to 5108 (6.4%). That took me about an hour which is pretty typical these days. When I first started writing I wrote pretty consistently at 1000 words an hour. I’d like to think the reduced rate is because I’m writing better prose but it may just be the distraction of the internet.

Today was a very productive day. I wrote another 909 words in an hour and salvaged 190 more taking me to 6,207 words at the end of the first week of the rewrite. That’s a good start. In a concession to the demands of work and marathon training I’ve set myself a target of 2,500 words a week compared to the strict 500 words a day goal I had for the first draft of the novel. I’m hoping to exceed that, just as I did this week, but I also wanted a realistic target. That’s 2,500 new words, by the way not including salvage so this week I was about 1,700 words ahead of my target.

So, that’s the first week done. Kaei has survived extreme pain, been offered a job, turned it down and been ‘encouraged’ to reconsider. I’ve been flip-flopping between liking the new draft and thinking I’m wasting my time and I suspect that will continue but I’m dropping back to earlier chapters and tweaking and adding detail as I write and I think it’s having a positive impact. Time will tell.