Unfortunately, my blog about completing my first novel is going off topic again as a big life change has delayed my final edit of “Inheriting S.O.F.I.A.” I hate that so many of my recent posts have been on why I’m not working on the novel, but selling our condo and finding a new place to live has been a major life event to deal with. My wife and I have basically been flipping our own condo, updating hardware, paint, flooring, HVAC, etc., and that alone was a tremendous amount of back-breaking work. We gave about a third of what we owned to charity, and put another third in storage, in order to give our place a very light and airy feeling. At one point, while moving a massive amount of boxes to storage, we came back and found that we’d left one lone box on the side of the building courtyard, completely exposed to anyone walking by. To my horror, I looked and found it was labeled as containing my second draft novel! Needless to say, my heart sank as that became a metaphor for how I’ve been neglecting it lately. Thankfully, it had not been disturbed and I quickly secured it under lock and key until the moment I can move it to our new place and get back to work.
The next stage to come was the staging and selling process, which was also involved. Those who have sold their properties know what it’s like to live an unnaturally perfectly clean lifestyle, knowing at any minute, someone may want to check out your home. Thankfully it all worked out well as we got multiple offers and settled on one of them. Now, since we accepted an offer, it’s all about the moving process. Complicated by staging furniture we’ll give away and new furniture we’ll buy,.. there’s still a lot on my plate.
My life is currently one big checklist of things to do, get and complete to make this move happen. And my special box with my 2nd draft novel waits for me to get this move done and unpack it. I believe I marked it with a very big star, so finding it among the thirty or so boxes should be easy,…right?
God willing, my next post will be about how productive a writer I’ve become from our new home.
No Progress: 🙁
“Burt’s Bots” Novel progress at Camp NaNoWriMo:
Outline: 17.816 words
Novel 1st Draft: 13,367 (Went back to outlining 1st though)
“Inheriting S.O.F.I.A.” Novel Progress:
1st Draft Novel: 78,198 words
2nd Draft Novel Rewrite: Up to page #213 of 351