Words About Writing

I achieved my Nanowrimo goal. I have not finished the full edit, but my goal was to spend a certain amount of time each day editing. I did that! I finally finished the scene edit on April 29th. I've been doing the line edit in reverse. Starting with the final scene, I am reading from the bottom up, correcting from my notes, and then reading through each full scene afterward. It's a slow process, but I'm enjoying it. Unfortunately, two things have dropped on my plate that take up a lot of time at the moment. For a few days, I did no editing at all. First, there's a major project I'm in charge of for work. It will last about two months, I think. Second, I have joined a friend to start a new community group, and beginning something new is always chaos at the start. Hopefully in a week or two that will smooth out. I guess, for now, I will focus on doing a little bit of editing every day, but not stress about how long I take at it. The work thing MUST be done on time. Th

("Progress" coordinates with the AtoZ challenge, if I was actually doing it.) I finally finished the Story Level edit.  It felt like it took a lot longer than it needed to, but actually, I had marked in my planner my goal dates and I was right on target! According to my Camp Nanowrimo goal, though, I am way behind. Some good days, some bad days, but the productive and underproductive days haven't balanced out yet. At this rate, according to Nanowrimo I'll meet my goal on May 8. Yikes! Today begins the Scene/Chapter Level edit. I had allotted just six days for this, but I now know for a fact I'll have 2 busy (underproductive) days in there, and might completely lose a day of editing due to LIFE. So I'm granting myself until the 25th. I've never NOT met a Nanowrimo goal yet. It seems silly. If you set a goal that's just you against a calendar, rearrange your time! It was in my power to set a goal that fit my schedule and I did so. The goal is achievable.

Well, so much for doing A-to-Z. I forgot about it for two days. But, in the spirit of it: EDITING CHALLENGES The way I'm doing this edit follows a "top-down" system I learned about, actually through a Nanowrimo virtual write-in. Four steps - 1. Read the manuscript and MAKE NOTES. Notes should be coded for whether the suggested change will effect a) the whole story (or at least multiple chapters), b) just the current scene/chapter, or c) just that sentence/line. 2. Tackle the notes that will effect the whole story. These could be big cuts, added scenes, or themes that stretch throughout the story. 3. Now, tackle the notes that will effect a scene or chapter. After the big cuts from step 2, there may be fewer of them left. 4. Finally, go through all those nit-picky line notes. Clean up the language. Make it flow. Theoretically, step one should only take a couple days, but this vomit draft needs a lot of work. I hope to get step one up to the mid-point of this WIP today. Tha

So much for "short, simple" writing projects. March is at its end, and the most writing I've done for the last two months has been tiny edits in an earlier work; one that needs better atmosphere, so I'm going in randomly and trying to tweak it. Half-heartedly, so there's minimal progress. I've really lost my mojo for writing lately. I thought that having extra work for a month (-ish) was doable. "I can do anything for a month!" ... but getting back into regular life has been a struggle. I feel like I'm walking in a brain-fog all day. I read. A lot. I study. Not a lot. I drink coffee. Something is lacking and I need a boost to get whatever that something is. Therefore, now that the time has come to pick back up my latest Nano creation for editing, I have decided to join Camp Nanowrimo. This is a Nanowrimo event where writers set their own goals. So my measurable goal for the month of April will be to edit for two hours a day. It doesn't sound

About a week ago I finally finished that review/revision of Draft One. It's still Draft One. This was just a once-over that included some filling in of details. Some added tension, some improved dialog. It's still a bit of a mess, but the plot hangs together. I finished it just in time for my schedule to explode for the next month-plus. For now I'll do short writing projects to keep up the practice, and then in March or April I'll pick it back up and re-read it with fresh eyes. Prepare to edit! Meanwhile, I'm reading a lot.  Now, if only I could find a good resource for short, simple, writing prompts... 

I completed Nanowrimo, and had the bones of a manuscript at the end of it. Yay! This time, instead of setting it aside immediately, I wanted to read through it to fill in any holes before setting it aside for a while. I'm not even a third of the way through, and got hung up on one scene for the last two days. I just couldn't figure out the fix. Today, I went to my writing group - was the only one there, actually, which was kind of nice - and wrote new dialog for that scene. JUST dialog. It's easier for me to see the scene that way, and I can add setting and actions after I drop it into the manuscript.  I'm pretty proud that I thought of that! I had copied the whole scene into a new text page to re-work it, but now that I have this new dialog, I can delete that text page, start over with the dialog, and then pull from the original text any descriptions that I want to keep. It's a breakthrough. I now know that I can do this with any tricky scene.