Closing In On SWEET BYTES

Sorry I haven't been keeping up with blogging.  Busy real life, you know.  Anyway, as you can see on the top of the sidebar, I just broke the 40,000 mark for SWEET BYTES!.
The goal wordcount for this draft of the novel is 50,000.  That is because I am one of those rare authors (at least, it seems rare) who always comes in *under* wordcount on the first draft.  So, hitting 50,000 is actually very good for me. 
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My wordcount goal for the final draft will be about 82,000. 
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How many drafts until I get there?  Well...every time I write a novel, I try to tweak the process with all that I learn in between writing them.  Like I said, I have a very busy real life (four children) and I have Tendonitis, so I have to make the most of my time on the computer. 
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First, I complete the story in my head until its pounding at the sides of my skull trying to get out.
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Second, I 'beat it out' in a method inspired and adapted from Blake Snyder's Save the Cat! book on screenwriting. 
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Third, I set that sucker on the Hero's Journey (also called the Monomyth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth   and see out it measures up.  I do this because structuring a story doesn't come naturally to me, like it does for a lot of authors.  I have to work very deliberately at it and, in fact, it held me back from achieving publicaiton for a long time.
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Once I've hammered out the Outline...
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Fourth, I write the First Draft, which is what I'm almost done with now.
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Fifth, since this is the third book in the series, I'm going back and rereading Crushed Sugar and Sugar Rush with notebook and pen in hand to make certain I'm tying into loose ends.  The beauty of ePublishing is Decadent allowed me to leave a lot more 'meat' in my first stories to tie in to the rest of the stories in the series.  Traditional Publishing rarely indulges an author, unless she's already making tons of money for them, which I, sure as heck, am not.  So, anyway, I have to make sure I'm not dropping the ball on any of the plot threads or character developments.
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Sixth, I'm going back to Outline and, with notebook in hand, slowly going through Sweet Bytes, and marking it up for things which are needed.  Research:   Ophelia converts a leaf-blower into a vampire-catching machine.  How the heck does she do it?  Are all the characters described?  How is the passage of time portrayed?  That always trips me up.  Do all the scenes make sense and move the story forward?  Do any need to be shuffled around?  Et cetera.  This is a modified and adapted version of the Notecards in Sweet Bytes, as well as what I learned from Holly Lisle, Fantasy genre author.
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After that, I have this huge pile of stuff I need to sort out and flesh out the story with.  That's actually quite fun.  I call that the Second Draft.
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Then, there's the Weed & Polish Draft.  Once that's done, things may change a little since the last time I wrote a full-length novel, because this time I already have a publisher for it.  I don't need to query. 
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However, I still write the Query Letter anyway.  Why?  Well, because a blurb is required and it comes out of that.  More than that, writing a query letter has proved extremely useful to me to make certain the story is precise.  Because, well, I tend to wonder after Tribbles otherwise.
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If you'd like to know more about Blake Snyder's book or any of the other things I find useful, click on the 'Writers' Resources' link on the sidebar. 
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Happy Easter Weekend!