Just Keep Swimming

16,413 words written in my novel in July, not counting the many that were cut from the story. I've still written an average of 500 words every day. By this I mean I was forced to skip a few days in extenuating circumstances (Harry Potter release, etc), but I did make up for it by writing enough the following days.

In addition to that, I edited a 1,341 word section from my old draft into the new one, morphing it into a 1,640 word section. But this is where numbers don't matter as much as I'd like. Actual editing has never been a particularly rewarding process for me, because I have such a hard time gaging how much work I've actually done. For someone who hates math, I still seem to like quantitative qualifiers for my work. Still, adding words to a section doesn't always make it better. Most the words I added were only to change the context, as well. The words I cut were more important, because, for the most part, it was just a good scene that needed pruning. This is real work, once again, but sometimes it feels almost like cheating, like I've taken a finished painting and just added a few brush strokes here and there. Nevermind I made the first painting.

Anyway, my other problem was just that the ideas were not flowing as easily as they were in June, but as you can see, I'm trying to stay optimistic about it. I'm having a lot of trouble with my main character and usually end up rewriting her scenes several times. This leads me to avoid writing about her a lot more than I should considering she's the main character. But when I look back at the good stuff, it still captivates me in a way my own writing never has, and it deserves to be finished so that the truly great ideas might one day have a chance to be appreciated by more than me, my sister, and a select group of friends. So I will struggle onward.

You're probably wondering why I don't just cut out my main character. I've considered it, but the whole story folds in on itself each time I envision such a scenario because she either has to be replaced, which would defeat the point of removing her as any new character would likely have the same problem and end up being her anyway; Or I cut her out entirely and my evil characters can live happily ever after together committing evil deeds--quite a tempting thought when I'm scraping about four days of work in frustration. But for now I am still determined make Gloria (my wayward main character) work because it seems to be the only way my story works. Plus I need to work out my issue with main characters in general. I've mostly solved my issue with female characters. I now like all my female characters but Gloria. So there's still hope that I can come to the same revelation for the main character.

Currently (As of August 6th because I'm too lazy to go back and figure out what it was when I first wrote this) the whole story is about 113.5 pages and 69,837 words.