I kept saying that I was "done" with a first draft of this chapter, and "done" with the first draft of the next.

What is "done," anyway?

At 2:30am, local time, on Sunday morning, I was "done" with the first draft of my novel. Was I relieved? Did I party? Did I collapse, basking in the glow of a job well done?

Nope. Because this milestone was just a milestone, and I'm still cruisin' down the highway. As soon as I finished the first pass at my last original scene (at least, it's my last original scene in theory), I scanned through the document and noted, "Oh, I still need to clean up this," and added to my running list, "Don't forget to take care of that." I futzed around with the names of a couple minor characters, began some formatting work, and so on.

In short, work continued without so much as a hiccup.

I must confess, I did take Monday off of the project, entirely. And I haven't been driving myself as hard this week as maybe I should have. But, here is it 3:30 am on Friday morning, and I'm back at the old routine (of the past month). I've finished another polishing pass at the second chapter. Earlier this week, I gave Chapter 1 another polish. Later today, I'll ask for a sanity check of the novel so far, and I'll give Chapter 3 another pass.

There remains a possibility that I may still make my arbitrary deadline of sending out the first three chapters to my first agent of choice by the end of this month. Either way, it's going to happen soon... unless my sanity checkers get back to me and say that my novel is utter rubbish. Always possible. :-(

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Thank you all for your occasional e-mails of encouragement!

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A friend sent me e-mail a few days ago noting that Wil Wheaton -- of "Wesley saves the ship!" fame from Star Trek the Next Generation -- posted on his web journal that he auditioned for a role in the TV pilot, Do Over.

Too funny.

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Another friend was kind enough to point out that there are at least two other novels that have been published directly to the web that have a similar premise and a similar title to my novel-near-completion. So, yeah, the title is going to have to be replaced. :-)

Possible contenders:

* John Carpenter's The Do Over

* Groundhog Life

* Wish Fulfillment Premise #3

* The One Where The Guy Lives His Life Over Again

* Ibid

I've always wanted to write a book called Ibid, just to see it referenced in footnotes.

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Gotta rename my main character, too. Brian Williams, I've been told, is a popular news anchor on MSNBC. Did I just type "popular" and "MSNBC" in the same sentence?

Possible replacement names:

* William Bryant

* Ishmael

* Tyrone Poppolopodous (a great Buffalo name)

* Stephen King

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I should go to bed. More later!

--Allan