[Novel] Progress!

A sort of progress, anyway. My writing goal for last week had three distinct levels - a "challenge" level, a "stretch" level, and a "normal" level. They looked like this:

Normal - complete edits and rewrites on Chapter 6
Stretch - complete edits and rewrites on Chapter 7
Challenge - complete edits and rewrites on Chapter 8

I'm pleased to say that I met the "stretch" level of my goal, successfully getting an edited Chapter 7 into my wife's waiting hands by the time she got home from work on Friday. I ended up making a fair number of revisions to Chapter 7, so I consider this a worthy accomplishment.

This week, on to Chapter 8. My recollection is that Chapter 8 needs a medium amount of revision, whereas Chapters 9 and 10 required rather minimal edits. If so, then completing up through Chapter 10 is my "Challenge" goal for the coming week. One caveat, though - I've always worried that Chapters 8-10, especially taken as a block, aren't sufficiently gripping. It may turn out to be necessary to make significant changes to them, which could throw my week out of whack. We'll see once I get into them. The good news, though, is that I finally feel like I'm moving ahead at last. Much of December and January seemed like slogging through honey - sweet and delicious, but freaking slow! I suppose my overall goal for February is to finish my re-writes of all existing chapters (up through 16) and be ready for new material in March. Ugh, that seems like an awfully long time, but it's probably the most realistic goal I can set at this point. Especially since the kids have a week of winter break coming up sometime soon, which will guarantee I get nothing done for that week. Wish me luck!