A Big Deal With Small Projects

After a productive weekend and eventful Monday and Tuesday, Angel has cycled into a fifth draft after four rounds of beta reading.

This weekend was my social media setup, which typically requires both days. However — thanks to the many revisions and cut-backs I’ve made to my schedule, and the new approaches I’ve taken with production — things have evolved to where I can get four weeks of media stuff finished and scheduled with only a Saturday! This is a big deal, because it gives me an extra Sunday to write on big projects every month if I can keep it up.

I managed this trick by using my Saturdays, which are disrupted and basically half-writing days at best, for “small projects”. These have included monthly social media stuff dispersed into separate tasks, and some other items in addition to the weekly shepherding of my #SciFanSat event on Twitter.

Along with occasional work on weeknights over the past month, I got everything produced beforehand. My Saturday was mostly raw uploading and scheduling, and I got everything done without destroying myself. I even wrapped the day with plentiful time to celebrate my 11th wedding anniversary with my wife, which was wonderful. :-) Hopefully, this sets a new and better setup paradigm going forward.

I put my reclaimed Sunday to work the next day. I used my wife’s feedback on Angel to edit it into a second draft over the course of the morning, then sent it to its second beta. I had intended to start editing Harvest in the second half of the day, but my second beta was awesome and got right back to me with a ton of good feedback by mid-afternoon. So I crafted a third draft of Angel instead, and got it off to the next beta in the chain.

Beta #3 had her feedback to me by Monday afternoon. A forth draft was sent to beta #4 that evening, and in turn I got his notes back and wrote a new draft on Tuesday night. Such fabulous and quick betas! Working against a September publishing deadline with August halfway over is a challenge, and these good folks gave me a big boost by being so expedient. :-)

Now in its fifth draft, Angel has gained a lot of polish and is getting close to its final form. I shared its opening paragraphs yesterday to begin my new WIP Snippet feature for Wednesdays, if you’re curious. It still needs a few more beta reads to get a full shakedown, though… and if you’d like to join its latter beta cycle and would enjoy a YA supernatural horror short story with some dashes of black humor, drop a comment.

Have a great week everyone, and keep writing!

~Jason H. Abbott