Words About Writing

Same old, same old... editing in reverse, slowly progressing. I found a vlogger who is hosting a "writing retreat" in June. Just a motivating way to remember to do a little every day. So I signed on and it's helping! Still slow going, but it motivates me to do the editing first.  I added another hefty work project to my task list, but the community group is less stressful already, so that's good. I think I will do this reverse-edit for every book. It helps me focus on the words. Of course, there will be subsequent edits. I know that. After I get back to the beginning, I'll have to print it out and do a full read-through to mark it up again. But for now, if I get back to the mid-point by the end of June I'll be happy. Keep on keeping on! 

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.

Of course, I'm doing Nanowrimo again. I decided which of my various story options appealed the most, and it's going pretty well so far (one week in). That is to say, I'm staying on top of the word count. At my writing group the other day, I read out the bit I'd written for their prompt, and got some good feedback: great atmosphere, "I could really see it"... with one negative, "I wish I could sense what she's feeling." Now, as I'm writing a new book, I realize that I'm still writing without feeling. I'm generally pretty proud of my dialog, and some of my descriptions are pretty good. (I do get hung up on the layout of my interiors, but that can be fixed in editing.)  I think I see what's happening as I write it, but I don't feel it. I might need to kick up my process a bit. One thing I'm SO happy about this time around is my support network. Namely, my spouse. Always supportive - a writer, also, but not participating this ...

Well, another creative activity took over a lot of my time, but I have been writing. I've been editing, and now that it's October, I'm considering whether or not to do Nanowrimo again this year. I enjoy it. I enjoy the rhythm of writing that it creates. Also, I've done it several years consecutively, so it feels like a November tradition.  The problem is I don't have a story burning to be written. So I've done some of the Nanowrimo Prep 101 ideas, attended some write-ins, and have some ideas going. I'm still unsure of them. I'll probably do it. There is one story that sparks my imagination over the others. More like, a character and an obstacle. I still don't really have a plot yet.  I may need to sit with my three top ideas and do a bigger brainstorm for plot before committing. It's almost November, so I should get on that! 

I want to write. I know the only thing is to write. Want to write? Do it! Just sit down and do it. Period. At my Writers' Group this morning, I got some good feedback on a section I read out loud. So I came home motivated to sit and work on that scene. But it's hot, and I'm uncomfortable, and it's distracting. No. That's an excuse. If I want to write, I need to just do it. If I really want to write, to have written, to be a Writer, then the temperature shouldn't matter. The fact that I'm out of coffee shouldn't matter. The work conference call coming up in 3 hours shouldn't matter.  I'm here, now. At my computer, ready to write. I need to write. Writer's Block does not exist. I will write, and I will write well.

Again with the long hiatus from blogging! First, it was because all was going according to plan. I followed a three-step edit process, making notes that change the overall story, then per chapter or scene, and finally noting lines that needed to be fixed. Then I traveled for a while and struggled to get back into the routine of writing and editing. Now I'm back, with a new focus. Still in the WIP from Nanowrimo 2022, but I realized that regardless of all the notes I had made, the overall "feel" of the book was wrong. It was too straightforward. This book should make the reader cringe. I want it to be spooky as hell. It's not my strong suit. A few days ago I saved the whole thing under a new title, so I can do a massive overhaul of it without obliterating the original in case this version turns out worse. Then I deleted a bunch of scenes that seem superfluous or too light. There are a few changes that will need to be made to the story line, so I've begun working th...

I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted. I finished that edit and moved on to beginning the edit of my November WIP. I admit, I forgot what I had already done until I got into my first review! So far, I haven't actually changed anything. I followed the suggestion of "read and summarize" as a way to see if the story I wrote matched the one I had set out to write. I'm not sure what value that action is supposed to carry, but for me, reading straight through without any changes helped me see some scenes that seem to be out of order, or are repetitive. I made notes. As for my "bugaboos"... I go through this every time. And it's Time. The Time-line, specifically. In an effort to make sure things are happening realistically, I need to be sure that the timing fits together. For this WIP, certain chapters are full of a dense couple days of action, while others might cover a longer period of time. And the season changes during the course o...

I'm excited about this step, so must document it. I don't seem to have written about the Nanowrimo Youtube series I watched on streamlining the editing process. It was in 4 parts (or three?), and really helped me focus each step. I started while mid-edit for that last editing project, so it was hard to fit the steps they provided into my Scrivener drafts. (The presenters used a program called Fictionary.) With my recent Nanowrimo draft, I have decided to set it up now in such a way to make the 3 step editing process easier later. And I love it. I did a quick review of the Scrivener tutorial to figure out the best way to set this up. I'm in there, using the Meta-data options to highlight the path of each scene, so I'll be able to see at a glance what needs to be done. Next step (starting today), I'm going to add key words and reference tabs to make it easier to link up different scenes. Part of the hassle of editing, I've found, is when a change in one scene affe...

Draft One of my latest novel is in the bag! I ended Nanowrimo with over 70,000 words! Not all of them will stay, obviously, and I had some issues in the middle with bits that I was working on disappearing, but I'm proud of myself. Today, I went into Scrivener's outline format and checked out the scenes I'd written. I updated summaries for some of them. (Pre-Nano I'd written summary cards for the scenes I wanted to write, but sometimes they ran away from the plan.) I will add this step to all of my first drafts. It will be very helpful later in finding what needs fixing, I'm sure! So that's it for now. Well, that's it for this draft of this book. Now I need to decide what happens next. I need to get back into my last editing work. Hmm... How much time until I pick that up? One day? Three? A week? Or do I fill in some of the blanks that are in this current one? Keep going every day? Next week? Not a week. I need to keep going. 

This year I set myself a daily goal of 2,000 words. If I can do that, at least for a while, then I'll have a cushion when I get to the muddy middle and stall out. I hope I don't stall out. I love watching that graph of my word count on the Nanowrimo website.  It's going extremely well. In fact, today the words are flowing so well that I'm willing to skip all other activities for as long as it keeps up. I've already exceeded 2k words (it's noon), but I'm in the middle of a scene and anxious to see where it goes. I still have the problem of having nothing set up for the ending. I know the ending I want, so maybe I should take a day to focus on that. Write the ending, and that way there's a goal to shoot for when the words won't come. We shall see. Today I'm just celebrating this feeling of success!

(And apparently I'm only blogging once a month these days. Oh well.) Yes! Nanowrimo is just days away. The last week or so I haven't done any real editing on the WIP. Just a little, in preparation to share with my writing group. I got good feedback, but it's harder to integrate than I expected. Most of my time is spent preparing for Nanowrimo. By preparing, I mean, hitting certain word-count targets each day. I'm only doing background stuff, though. To get into the characters and flesh out the relationships, I started with dialog and phone calls and chats. Show the interaction. It's taken off in unexpected directions, I must say. Now I need to have another look at the conflicts and plot points lined up, and rework them. As I've been prepping, most of this dialog seems to be setting up the big issue. I'll need a lot to come after that. I need to double check story arcs, because maybe this is not the standard plot that I expected it to be. It would be nice, fo...

I'm trying to break up my time more specifically between editing the WIP and prepping the next one. The line edit is still very slow, sometimes three days on a scene or chapter, but it is still rewarding when it comes out right. Breaking it up by doing some work on another thing helps boost that "serotonin" that hits after I accomplish something. I've noticed that my books don't have a ton of conflict. An initial conflict of course, and struggles - internal or external - on the way to resolving the main conflict, but I don't tend to "up the ante" as the book progresses. The next work I'm planning will have more of that. I'm lining up what conflict will happen at what point in the book, and trying to do a better job of outlining. A lot of the conflict points are now set. I'm moving on in recent prep-work to focus on the characters. I know who they are, but I haven't yet gotten into their heads. Characters usually come more easily to me...

Has it been a month? Shame on me! I finished the Scene Edit for this WIP, and have started on the Line Edit. This is a slow process. It's rewarding - perfecting the words - but time consuming and difficult. This is when I really see/read/hear what has or hasn't worked. Some days, when I feel stuck in a scene, the easy choice is to set it aside for a while and come back later. But that really doesn't help. I've found that it's best to stay in the hard scene, make changes, and then on the re-read later, maybe make more changes. That doesn't mean I don't ever give in to the urge to "set it aside", but I know that's not how I'll make progress. It's important to remind myself that this is important to me. Does that sound strange? If it's important, I shouldn't have to remind myself that it is, right? You'd think so, but right now the value of my work doesn't have a price tag. I think that's why it's easy to forget tha...

The more I edit this second book, the more I realize my first book is not ready for publication.  So I'm backing off from the query process. I threw a question (to query or not) into the cybernet and a response caught my mind: "Perfect your work. Don't burn bridges."  Am I to understand that by querying early, the fact that my name has been submitted and rejected before is a "burned bridge" for an agent or agency? That's a scary thought! So my earlier goal to step up the writing has been underlined. Double underlined. Write, write, write. Edit. Perfect the writing. Get this one actually ready for querying, and THEN query. Yay! That makes me happy because writing and editing is a lot more fun than querying.

I'm resetting my goals. Writing comes first. It's been very easy as an unpublished writer to set the writing aside, especially now that I have a business to take my time. But I think I need to ease back from that. Here's the thing. The business is good; it's supposed to solidify retirement, but it's not "my" thing. I supported it financially, and now have many things to do with it. I've been working very hard to do my part and show that I'm invested. I don't know that my efforts are as well-received as I thought. I know what I've been doing would be helpful in the long-run, so I won't totally stop, but ... I can slow down. My writing. That is my goal. That's for me. That could be my retirement plan. But I need to focus more on the day-to-day of it. The improvement of style. The writing. The editing. The querying. Get myself in place for my own future. Work for the business can fill in gaps in my day, if needed. Little side projects...