Progress on Paper

I've spent the last three days working on The Long Summer Run. I wrote most of the day on Tuesday, taking breaks so I didn't hurt myself and set up neck problems that could put me down for a week. I managed to write about 1000 words that day.

After I did that, I realized I needed some additional writing in the earlier part of the story to set up for the ending of the story. I have four possible solutions to my mystery. A couple could work with minor edits. Two of them will need more extensive changes and additions. I can't really proceed until I actually know which ending I am going to use. I know which one I feel inclined to use but it is rather tragic and I'm reluctant, which probably means that is the one I should use. 

So, on Wednesday, I compiled the story in Scrivener and printed it off. I ran out of ink at page 100. I have to reprint 101-146. I used a small font because it reduced the number of pages by nearly 50. I did front and back. Then, I saved it as a PDF and opened Adobe Reader and turned on the Read Out Loud feature. I've been following along as the program reads it to me.

Let me say this is not like reading aloud to yourself. The robotic voice is boring. There's no inflection, no emotion, and no accent. It mispronounces words and does weird things to some words, like spelling "OH!" instead of saying it. "It is" used together is also a problem for some reason that defies logic. The important thing is that it is, overall, quite helpful. 

I've been able to catch misspellings, incorrect usage, missing words, too many words, poor structure, and areas that need work. I know I'll have to do this again after all the corrections but it will be that much less work. I don't know if I'll do it with Adobe again. 

I have no idea if I'll have an actual novel length story. That's problematic. I'm at 60K words and there's more to write but I'm not sure there's 100K. These are basically unedited words so in theory there'll be less. 

The bonus to doing this is that I realized again that I love this story. Really. I think it may be one of my favorites. There are places that I get lost in because I like it so much. I hate not actually writing but I have to tell myself this is part of it. 

So, I've made some progress but it is sooooo slow. I'm not a patient person. Today I didn't even start on the read through until after about 7 p.m. I spent the day reading something for fun. I've taken a short break from the read thru to post this and then it is back to it for a short while. Tonight will be an early night for me.