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....

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'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. 

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...

Done! As of yesterday, I finished this edit. It felt weird to step away from the novel with that idea. This is, officially, my last draft. Next is lining up my readers and sending it off to them to get their feedback. I didn't want to slacken off - I'd been so good at getting in and working on it every day - that right away today I made it my task to send out the messages verifying readers. I had a growing list of possible beta-readers, collected from people I'd met in person and on line, names of readers from the first time around, and a couple old friends who were interested. They say not to use people who know you well because they are likely to be less critical, but these two are significant for different reasons and I didn't want to leave them out. This morning, I sat down and sent out 5 messages to 5 people who had expressed at some point an interest in doing this. As of tonight I've heard back from three of them. Two definite yesses and one with questions bef...

I was going to come in and write "DONE!" because I finished adding in the extra text chats that tie the two subplots together, but then I saw that I've been overusing the word "done". I'm not truly done. I am, again, done with a step. It did not take long at all, after reviewing the manuscript and writing in what I wanted where... so easy to just drop that into the Scrivener version. According to my to-do list the next step is sending it out to beta-readers, but I was impressed by the weakness of my writing as I re-read it the last couple weeks, so I may be in for one more edit. I need to liven things up.  Some scenes are great as-is. I'm really proud of them. Other parts I know I'm just trying to fill in blanks. And do I really need all of it? Also, I noticed a lot of passive voice. I'm not sure what I'll do, so I'm taking a day or two to try and figure it out.

Finally, I have postponed some things until September. Granted, September isn't very far away, but hopefully it's far enough. I've been trying to finish this novel (draft 1) for ages, it feels. I'm close enough now that maybe a week is enough time to get there. If not, I have some thinking to do. My brain is filled with the other WIP, the one closer to "done". I'd postponed the (hopefully-)final edit to write this beast I'm now trying to end. I only expected to postpone editing for a few months. I want to get in and finish it! So I need to set a deadline for finishing draft 1 of this current novel. The good news is, as long as it seems to be word-count-wise (the draft, that is), when I did the math, it was only 360 pages so far. That's not as outrageously long as I thought! So, after an incredibly long first draft gets edited down, I'm guessing I'll end up with about a 400 page novel.  Do-able. Definitely do-able.

After much thought, some prayer, and a review of my previous notes, I have decided to begin a new project for Nanowrimo. As for the current book in review, I will continue making my notes for the next edit. However, instead of doing that edit as a November project, I will write a brand new first draft of a new novel in November, and begin the next edit of my current WIP after that. I'm happy with this plan. That gives my WIP time to sit after I make notes and before beginning the edit. It also will give the next book time to sit after writing the first draft, while I edit WIP. That may sound confusing, but it's not. This next one has been in my head for a while, but it involves some world-building, so not much is written except notes. We'll see how it goes!

Life happened this past week/weekend, so my progress slowed, but it's okay. Still plugging away at the edit almost every day. Scene by scene. I'm optimistic to finish this draft by the end of the month. Then I'll do a full proof-read and probably start looking for readers. Alpha readers? Beta readers? I'm not even sure which would be the right terminology. I'll figure it out. In addition to the recent life concerns, a friend is in town this week. She's not staying with us, and knows I'm working, but having that "I'll give you a buzz sometime" ringing in my ears always leaves me with a feeling that I don't want to get too deeply involved in any project. It feels like a personal flaw and I'm trying to overcome it. I should just do what I need to do and feel unapologetic if she calls me and I'm busy. I'll get there. The new book I started working on, slowly, as the muse strikes me, is getting to a point where I feel I need...