"An' you best take them as preachin' words!"--Finnienne Fenn Finnegan

That first pass is going to be drek.  You're just getting the story-- ideas of scenes, sketches of conversations down on paper.  I've come to accept it.  It's the second or third pass where you'll be able to look at those cludgey paragraphs or jumbled sentences, and distill from them the line that really snaps and sings.  Those redundant lines, the cludgey bouts of exposition serve a purpose.  They're raw materials, like ore or an over-saturated solution that the clarified idea emerges from.

Cleaning up a short before sending it back to the subbing pits tomorrow, and finished up the 1st draft of a 5K short.  Going back to the WiP this week while I let the short simmer for revision.

Yeah, I watched last year's lecture series, so I've not seen a lot of new material, but it's serving as a source of useful reminders.  Now, the website does have a handy peer-critique format I've gotten some useful feedback on, so even if one just listens to the lectures with half an ear to refresh the memory, those critiques are pretty handy. 

No NDA's for me.  My betas are all friends, I pay them in beef jerky, kind words, and promises of a t-shirt if I ever sell enough books to have a few t-shirts made.  In some cases I have the pleasure of providing my own rudimentary attempts at being beta for their work.

For storage, I use laptop, email, and dropbox as well as the odd flash drive.  And my betas have copies in their emails should I ever have a total crapocalypse.

Broke 100K today on the WiP.  This year, I've written about 140K total between the WiP and two completed novellas.

First draft of The Terror of Twevlety Town is done.  40K in just under a month.  Proofing and beta feedback in progress.

I shall now make gooey, brain-melted noises.

9K this week.  Wasn't happy with the way some events and characters in the central narration went, so I'm doing a side piece from another character's PoV.  Her narrative only brushes against my protagonists in a few places, but she's key in some major events.  It's helped me round a number of characters out, as well as build some better motivations and more realistic action/reaction sequences in the main work.