Notes From The Battleground
Editing? It’s hell. A whole lotta hell.
I’ve often said that I’d rather write 3 more novels than edit one of them. It stems most certainly from my very short attention span. I think of 18,000 other things I could be doing and I struggle with myself CONSTANTLY to just stay. on. task.
It’s not easy.
But, I’ve got my red pen in hand and I’m slashing and adding and cutting and rethinking and doing all the stuff that makes me tired to even think about. I’m hoping beyond hopes that I’ll have a decent 3rd draft of GOODHALO done and ready to send out to my top 5 agents by the end of January.
For laughs, here are some random notes I’ve scrawled on my manuscript. Don’t try and make sense of ’em.
“…say something about her mother being eaten?”
“that resembled the village drunks”
“They said their holy cleric words at him…”
“The face continued to haunt him”
“Heavens. More than one? Mayhap.”
“His eyes never left the lumbering creature.”
Yeah. You see what I’m up against.
That being said, my posts are going to be sparse for a while, friends. Don’t worry, there’s a post coming up about the Tegan & Sara show I saw on Friday. Heck, I even got pictures!!!
In the meantime, wish me luck. I’ve got my hands full.
Luck, luck, and a dash more luck thrown in Thomas… Love the quote about the mother being eaten, sounds like my kind of tale. GULP! That sounded awful… Hope your red pen is getting a good work out. Cate 🙂
What is GoodHalo about? LOL. I know about revision hell. I am currently tiptoeing through there with my red pen, black pen, and highlighter, as we speak. It’s rough. I plan to have my 4th draft out to my beta readers by the end of January.
CG/PR – Thanks! I was looking through my notes and I just started laughing at some of my goofy comments. But yeah, the red pen is workin’ overtime!
DH – Goodhalo is about zombies and clerics and one boy’s struggle to show his father he’s not the schlub everyone thinks he is. Sort of. Yeah…I’m still working on the pitch.
Great pitch. I’d read it! (From your comment) Hang in there. Hey, do you edit while you write? Do you edit better with a hard copy and a red pen?
Sniz-tastic – You know, I don’t tend to edit much while I write, and here’s why: I’m one of those people that has a VERY short attention span (as mentioned) and if I stopped and re-worked the same chapters over and over again before even finishing the book, I can pretty much count on the story being dead in the water.
My method is to crank that sucker out while it’s fresh, exciting and holding my interest. I let it sit in a drawer for a couple months and then come back to it later.
I’ve heard of too many writers talking about the novel they’ve been working on for 8 years. 8 years??? Are you kidding me?
Not saying they’re best-sellers, but I wrote 3 books in just over a year. I can’t imagine it taking years and years anymore.
Work it, baby.
You need to give me lessons, Tappity. I hear over and over that the only way to get a story done is to not edit while you write, but. I. CAN’T. SEEM. TO. STOP. Help me!
Sniz (and any other wannabe fast-drafters): Here’s a quick n’ easy way to see results for that novel that you can’t quit messin’ with.
First: Go here http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter/and set yourself up with a word meter. If you can’t figure out how to build that page element in Blogger, as RobotPants Du Jour.
Second: Guesstimate how many words it’ll take to get that puppy done. For Anna 2.0, I guessed around 60,000 words. It ended up being 75,000 words. Oops.
Third: Divide the number of days into the number of words you need and that’ll give you an idea of what you need to write each day.
Fourth: Write. Just. Get. It. Down. Turn off your inner editor. Realize that this isn’t your one and only pass at this book. It’s going to be clunky. It’s going to suck in parts. But dammmit, get it done.
Fifth: Toss the whole thing in a drawer and work on something else. After you’ve let your novel sit, pull it out of mothballs, break out the Uniball Vision Micro Tip Red Pen and get to editing.
The result? You’ll have a novel in no time. It won’t be perfect, but you’ll have a workable skeleton in which to hang some detail, flesh out the characters a bit more, see what works and what doesn’t.
Plus…it feel so GOOD to have a book done…even if it needs work. Trust me on this, Snizzy.
Good luck with the editing! Stock up on emergency red pens. Just in case there’s a snow storm or something. 🙂
Looking forward to the Tegan & Sara post!!! Awesome!! I am so jealous you saw them!!
My mother was eaten–you insensitive barrel of dog snot!! 🙂
BTW–when are we going to shoot each other on Halo 3?
Thanks for the advice, Thomas. What do you do when you realize as you’re writing that something doesn’t make sense and to fix it and have it MAKE sense, you’d have to change the previous 50 pgs? And do you ever have better ideas as you’re going along and now you want the story to be ____? Only for it to be _____, you’d have to start over because nothing will make sense otherwise? Then there’s the doubt. Argg!
My stand-by response will always be: fix it later. Seriously. You KNOW you’re going to have to re-work it another bunch of times, so you might as well steamroll your way to the end.
Stopping to ‘adjust’ or ‘tweak’ along the way is merely a detour that’ll keep you from getting to the end of of the line.
Try it. Give yourself permission to make mistakes, don’t dwell on the perfect word each time. In the words of my high school English teacher:
Just tell the damn story.
Not sure if you’ve ever finished a novel or anything, but there is truly nothing like it. Even when it’s less-than-perfect, the feeling is quite unreal.
OK, Tappity. I am taking your advice. Thanks!