And The Winner Is...

Project number 1!

So, here's The Plan (TM):
I start serious work on project 1 today. I can still work on other stuff - research, world-building for project 4 or plotting for project 3 - but I have to get writing done on something every weekday. That means either I'm writing on project 1, project 2, or doing a short story. But preferably working on project 1.

That gives me some leeway for when I get stuck on project 1 or inspired by something else, but I'm still getting results. As long as I am moving forward with something, eventually they will get done. I cannot start a short story and let it sit unfinished - and since I normally write short stories with a specific market in mind already, that shouldn't be too much of a problem. Ideally I would like to get at least 500 words a day done on one of the two long projects regardless of any other work, short story or plotting or what have you.

On a related note, I started re-reading my novel again last night, kind of prepping for starting in on project 1. Got about halfway through. I made a few very minor changes (I think that's part of how you know when you're done, you're down to only changing a word here, a phrase there, and mostly the changes you are making are cosmetic anyway) but I did find one extra word, where I had obviously changed a sentence previously and left a "he" in an odd spot instead of deleting it. How many times have I read over that part and missed that??? Ugh! Plus I found a few places where the underlining included the space after the end of the underlined sentence. I thought I caught all of those the last time. Bah! Double Bah! (Note - if you do a "find/replace" to change double spaces to single spaces, it will turn all of the spaces that come after underlined sentences into underlined spaces, even if the double-space at the end wasn't underlined.)

Errors aside, I'm really happy with how it turned out. Yes, there are still things I could do to it - there were a number of changes I didn't make that I could have. And I'm sure my future editor will have changes to make as well. But overall I'm happy. And I had a moment there, just for a second, where I could see a scene as if I hadn't written it, as if I were reading it for the first time. And I went "whoa, this is actually pretty cool."

And that was a damn good feeling.