tiiiiiime is on my side

I made up a schedule to complete the second draft of my adult novel, and the first draft of the YA.  These dates are on my calendar in Sharpie, so they'd better be final :)  

It's been a long time getting here, but the draft/outlining stage for both stories is far enough along that I can map out the rest of the process and come up with reasonable dates.  I'm finally, finally seeing the ribbon at the end of the race.

Here's how I figured out the schedules:

For purposes of outlining, I divide each book into acts- in this case, both novels have five acts.  Each act is divided into four "chapters" of twenty to twenty five pages.  

The process for each draft is: 

1. rough draft of each "chapter" in an act

2. sharpen/tighten the "chapters" (one day each) 

3. polish of the act as a whole.  

(The YA is a little different in that I don't have a lot of rough material yet, so I'm getting the first three acts down on paper before anything else).

When all five acts are done, I'll spend a day patching up obvious holes (mostly mechanical, plotting/info stuff) and put the draft away for a few weeks or more.

The "Put-Away" date for the YA is February 28.

The "Put-Away" date for the novel is March 9.

That feels SOOOOO far away.  I don't think I'll make my final draft date of April 18 (at least for the adult novel), which SUCKS.  But I'm just going to put my head down and stick to the plan.  I've learned the hard way that it'll just be tougher and take longer if I don't.