Two Steps Forword

Editing a manuscript is the most frustrating part of the actual writing process. I am frugal with my words, and I am struggling to get my story to the 65,000 words goal. I was up to 42,900 as of last night. Since then, I have been trying to make the story line coherent and uniform. I have four different perspectives written in third person omniscient, and the main thread of the story is written in first person limited. So juggling these five perspectives has put several holes and gaps in the plot. In going back through the story, I've trimmed many words, currently the manuscript stands at 41,200 words.

Now, basing my forward progress just on word count is very misleading. I've put hours into this manuscript so far today and have gone backward in word count. So while my plan of hitting 43,500 today is getting further away, I've actually made a lot of progress on this.

It's too frustrating to go by word count. And while I still have long term word count goals to hit, for the remainder of this manuscript, I am going to go by man hours put in, and not by the number that shows up at the bottom of the page.