My read-through of Manuscript: Charlie is complete. 134,502 words read and marked in one week.

I honestly was not sure I could complete it at all, but I did! And now I have the entire weekend to implement some edits.

My reading totals from last weekend really carried me into finishing early:

• 19,000 words on Friday night
• 31,000 words on Saturday
• 33,000 words on Sunday

I think my system for marking up my manuscript worked well, too.

I started out using a red pen for line edits and a black pen for notes or comments, but I ultimately just did both with the Red Pen of Writing Doom.

I then used a pink highlighter on words or phrases that maybe needed some reconsideration, but I didn’t fix right then and there because I wanted to keep reading.

A yellow highlighter helped me track all of the names and words I want to include in my glossary, so I can just build/complete that as I go.

I have a great opportunity to finalize this manuscript this weekend, since the wife will be out of town, and a couple of the friends I hang out with most often are also out of town. So it’s just me and Teddy hanging out at home!

I have always tended to excel under pressure. Such was my life as both an undergrad and grad student, reading entire books in three days and comprehending them enough to write cogent, thoughtful critical reviews on them.

But, there’s always a cost…

Write-Life Balance

In all honesty, I’m looking forward to sending this thing off to my book designer on Sunday night. I’m edging dangerously close to burnout point.

My wife called me on it earlier this week, but I forged ahead anyway.

Work-life balance in general has been difficult to maintain recently. If it hasn’t been work stressing me out at home, it’s been publishing/writing stuff. And when I get stressed, the first thing that tends to suffer is my sleep schedule.

When I get into these cycles, I sleep 5-7 hours per night during the work week, and I have a terribly hard time getting myself out of bed in the mornings. Then, I oversleep 10-12 hours per night on the weekend from overworking myself. I much prefer to wake up at a reasonable time on the weekends — like, before 10am — and get started on my day.

So this weekend will also be about catching up on some much-needed sleep. What will really help, however, is if I can catch up on all that sleep and still wake up before brunch-time.

Then I can be refreshed and ready to tackle the next steps in my publishing process next week.

Goals for 4/20

1. Implement all edits to WoEM this weekend
2. Send manuscript to book designer
3. Sleep
4. Like, really sleep a lot
5. Prepare the next steps of the publishing process

Steve D