Editing FRANK

Last night, I returned to editing FRANK and got up to page 39. The current draft of the novel is 393-ppg, which means I'm slightly less than 10% done. If I keep a consistent pace, like this process is nothing but a filling tool bar while a program loads on Windows, I'll be done in nine days, or Oct. 2.

But I know I'm going to be able to get more work done on Saturday and Sunday than on the weekday nights, which makes my goal of handing in an edited first draft on or before the first of October realistic.

Barring disaster, of course - something I unfortunately have to factor into every endeavor. Some people are born with weird toes or big noses or genetic conditions. I was born with strange luck.

Naturally, the first few chapters are a lot cleaner than the last act is gonna be, since I've read those words a billion times. (Slight exaggeration, but not by much). I also decided to rename the love interest. Her name used to be Ana, but I thought that was too close on the page to Adam, one of our protagonists. So I switched her to her middle name, Rosa. I knew I was gonna do this a while ago and didn't think much of it... all I gotta do is a quick Find/Replace, right? Not quite, 'cause Find/Replace doesn't differentiate the sequence of the letters a-n-a between stand-alone appearances (i.e. Ana) and when it's integrated within larger words. So, for example, doing a Find/Replace to change Ana into Rosa would also change the word "banana" into "banRosa." My two-second job got a lot longer.

I'm going through this doc with a fine-toothed comb, anyway, so it's not that big of a deal. But I know character name changes are exactly the kinda thing that tends to breed ghosts. It would be wise to edit the full draft, leave it alone for a couple of days, go back and just read it to read.