On my third draft, I'm realizing chapter 3 sucks.  I mean, it doesn't even contain the main character it's referencing.  I am sitting in a suite in the Blue Chip Casino on the 4th floor, the memorial tournament is on in the background, Bubba Watson is leading, and my wife is napping.  I decide chapter 3 must go, and I start decide now is the time I start it.  The best way I know to make sure my antagonist is in chapter 3 is to start the chapter with his name and go from there.  Cool, one word down, 1,999 more to go before I can think about stopping.

I printed out the third draft and edited it by hand with a red pen.  Just last night, I finished it.  Now, I'm going back and typing in all those changes and expanding on the notes I added.  Some of those notes are "rewrite this chapter from the main character's perspective."  So, typing this in might take a bit.  Hopefully I'll be done with it near the end of June.  That's my new goal.  

Going through my third draft, I'm starting to realize I don't know which characters are showing up in which chapters, and why.  So, I'm now starting to write out a chart.  On the left hand side, I'm writing the characters names.  On the top, I'm writing chapters.  In each box on this grid, I'm now adding in basically what's happening to the characters in each chapter.  This will give me a high level view of what's going on in the novel.  

We'll see how that helps.  I'll report back later.

Working hard on the third draft.  I'm about 200 pages into my almost 500 page manuscript.  I spent some time on the deck tonight smoking a cigar and doing some more editing.  The stuff I'm reading now I wrote about a year ago, and it still seems to be holding up.  I do need to amp up the conflict, but I like what I have so far.  My goal is to finish this third draft by the end of May.  I'm meeting up with my writing coach in June, and I want to have something I'm proud of to show her.  

My previous coach, Jerry Cleaver, was great, but unfortunately he passed away.  He was a great man and I'm sorry I didn't have more time with him.  I'm sure all who knew him, especially his family, agree.  He was a great soul.

My new coach is Mary Carter.  I haven't met with her yet, she's taking over for Jerry.  My first meeting will be June 11th, and I'm excited to start this new chapter with her as my coach.  I'm sure she'll do great.  

Oh well, time to get back to it.  A writer never quits!