Editing Methodology

I've spent a lot of time perusing author websites to figure out various editing strategies. Most people seem to be very organized about it. They read through their entire draft, making notes of issues that will need to be changed, referencing lines and pages, etc.

Sounds good, I thought, so I started doing it. I created a Google Document in which I keep track of the following:

• Status (Not Started, In Progress, Complete) - Everything is in Not Started as of now
• Edit Level (Line, Paragraph, Page, Chapter, Global) - Little edits (such as changing a name on one page, giving a nick name, altering small details) are line edits. Anything with a bit more explanation is paragraph or page, depending on how much I think it will require me to add. I'm reserving "Chapter" for scenes I want to add, etc. And "Global" refers to changes I will need to make multiple times (such as changing someone's name throughout the entire manuscript, or changing language through the entire manuscript, etc).
• Problem - This is where I'll describe what the issue is. For example, "Character X does not have enough responsibility for Big Event Y occurring to her."
• Solution - I'll describe very briefly what my overall strategy is to fix the problem. If it's something simple like changing a name, I just put "Revise" or "Edit," but for the above example, I would put, "Add scene in which Character X is made aware of the issue, and another scene in which she still ignores it by taking Actions X, Y, and Z."
• Steps - This is my last bit of information I'm tracking. I'll use up one row for each step that needs to be taken, so that I can mark each step as complete (see Status above) as I finish it. For example, I may have one that says, "-Between Chapters 12 and 13, add a scene in which Character X speaks with Character Y, and Character Y explains blah blah blah (much more specific in the actual document, but I can't share here yet)." Then, another one would say, "-After Chapter 14, have character X ignore the advice and continue to take the same actions."

So far, it's been working quite well... except that I just ran into a roadblock. I've been reading through, and I'm finding a few very easy edits I need to make, and small chunks of text that will need to be deleted. Do I really want to go to the spreadsheet, fill out all that information about it, save it for later, go back and find it later, and delete it then, then check it off my list? Seems inefficient. So, if it's something that simple, I'm just making the edit as I go.

Because I work in Scrivener, I try to edit directly in that software. But, occasionally, I will export the manuscript into a word document and edit it there (for example, if I'm editing it on my lunch break at work, or on another computer, where I don't have that software). If that's the case, I have to be sure to make a big note for myself before the chapters I edit, reminding myself to copy and paste it into my Scrivener version of the book. This typically involves something like this...

"Chapter Twelve

THIS SCENE HAS BEEN EDITED DON'T FORGET TO COPY AND PASTE IT YOU WONDERFUL BEING!"

Yeah, that's right. I call myself a wonderful being in my writing. Nothing like positive reinforcement, eh?

Basically, this is combining the "Organized" method I created, and a "Fly-By-The-Seat-Of-My-Pants" method that sort of organically grew. Sounds just about perfect for me, actually...

Editing Woes

I've heard there are two kinds of writers. The ones who enjoy writing the first draft, and the ones who enjoy editing the living crap out of it. [This is probably a vast oversimplification. Forgive me.]

I tend to be very precise in my language. In relationships, this tends to irritate people, because I force them to be accurate with their words and am often found asking multiple questions to define what a conversational partner really thinks. So, for some reason, I always assumed I would be the "editing the living crap out of it" person. The person who enjoys the time spent going over and over and over a draft.

Humph. 'Tis not so.

My first draft is finished. It topped out at 92k, was cut down many times (and got as low as 75), and is now back up to the mid 80s. So, obviously, I've done some serious editing... right?

But it doesn't feel like it. And my brain is still jam packed with new ideas every day. Things I could/should/might change. Things that irk me. Insecurities about whether my plot is too simple or my character is too wimpy.

Yet, I'm not writing. Haven't in about two weeks. It's like having analysis paralysis... but with words. Boo.

For now, my excuse is that I haven't had time. Which is true. I've been extremely busy with my day job and blog and visiting with family and friends, so I haven't had any large chunks of time with which to really put an editing dent in this book. So, it's harder to start.

I remember when I was a lifeguard in High School. If I only worked a few days per week, it was always hard to get up and go. But, when I was packed and worked a shift every day, it became a habit to slip into that awful one piece swimsuit and drive my jeep to work. I want writing to be my habit again.

Side note: Why does having coffee anywhere in my vicinity make my sweat? I haven't even taken a sip of it yet. It's sitting a foot away. Yet, here I am, twisting my hair into a bun. Sweating.

Here's to habits. To good ones. To damn good writing habits. Here we go...

The Good-Morrow

Poetry Saturday. It's not a thing, but I'm making it a thing; thus it is a thing.

The Good-Morrow, John Donne

I WONDER by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved ? were we not wean'd till then ?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly ? 
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den ?
'Twas so ; but this, all pleasures fancies be ;
If ever any beauty I did see, 
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls, 
Which watch not one another out of fear ;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone ;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown ;
Let us possess one world ; each hath one, and is one. 

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, 
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest ;
Where can we find two better hemispheres 
Without sharp north, without declining west ?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally ;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I 
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.

Being A Writer...

...means your brain now has an excuse for the very very creepy things it dreams up. Last week, this short quip in a conversation popped into my head, so it's been sitting in a note on my iPhone for a bit.

His comment lit a spark in her mind, reminding her of something she'd heard about him when she arrived. She looked up and asked, "You remember when you killed Roddeck?"
His head tipped back as he sighed. "Ugh," he said with an irritated tone to his voice, "Took me an entire day to clean up the mess I made in killing him."

God bless anyone who ever accidentally picks up my phone. No, I'm not a killer. I just write about them.

Poison Study

I'm in love! Tell the world, the whole world, that I'm in love! No, not with a man (okay, I am, but that's another story). No, not with a stripper (Ugh T-Pain). But with a book.

Maria V. Snyder, you are a genius. Or a magician... Maybe both. You writing is so eloquent. I, for one, am glad that you favor analogies and metaphors. They make me happy.

I'm a rapid kindle abuser. By that, I mean I've been known to rip through kindle books at lightning speed, which means my poor boyfriend gets emails from Amazon saying his crazy book buying girlfriend has purchased yet another $9.99 Young Adult Book. Because I have to read Young Adult. Because I write it.

Well, I've been burned a few times. I bought a few books from the $1-$2 range on Amazon because I'm cheap. They were horrible. So after being burned, I did my research. I spent a few hours (no joke) reading reviews and looking for a few things...

• female protagonist
• strong female protagonist
• action
• dystopian, fantasy and/or science fiction... basically just a different world
• a love story
• a strong love story

Finally, I decided on the Poison Study series. I took a leap and purchased the kindle equivalent of a box set - a set of 3 of her books bundled together - for something like $18.99. And oh my gosh am I thrilled. I'm not even finished with Book One yet, and I have never been happier to not be finished with a book.

If you're looking for a sample of her writing (which you will fall in love with from page 1), here's a link to the first chapter of Poison Study on her website. Once you've fallen deeply in love (seriously. you. will.), you may decide you're obsessed and want to be her -- here is her advice for writers.

More on my new obsession later...

Banned Books

According to the list of books on Absoloute Write's post this week (find it here), having a book banned pretty much destines it to be taught in High School classrooms across the U.S.

Okay, I realize that's a logical fallacy. Just because most of the celebrated banned books happen to be schoolroom favorites doesn't necessarily mean that having a book banned will make that happen. But it's still pretty interesting, isn't it?

What is it about us that makes us want to ban books one minute, then teach them to impressionable kids the next?

What do these books have in common? As any good book should, they reveal some hideous things about human nature. So perhaps it's in our nature, too, to bounce back and forth on a pendulum between wanting to hide this nature (by banning the books) and wanting to expose it further (by teaching them).

Here's  a list:

1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses, by James Joyce
7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
9. 1984, by George Orwell
12. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
16. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
24. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son, by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
49. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
50. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
67. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
74. Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence
11. Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov

15. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

23. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

33. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

36. Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin

38. All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren

40. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

45. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

48. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence

53. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

55. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie

57. Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron

64. Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence

66. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

73. Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs

80. The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer

84. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller

88. An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser

97. Rabbit, Run, by John Updike

Write Space

Writing-and-editing-space. Gotta have it.

This was perfect for a Monday afternoon editing session. Other than the 30 minutes during which I thought I'd lost a revision in my book and almost had a heart attack...

E.M.E.T.I.B.

My book was done.

Like seriously done.

Until I changed it.

I'm already down from 92k to about 83k, and I'm still cutting... but still adding, too.

Why? Character Development.

Because my main character needed a little more, for lack of a better word, balls. And she's a woman. But I realized I had too many things happening TO her and not enough things happening BECAUSE of her. She was REACTING at times I wanted her to ACT.

What does it mean? That Arthea just got ten times more badass. Think Sydney Bristow in the first 50ish seconds of this clip:



BOOM

FIRST DRAFT DONE!

Okay, my first draft is done. As of about a week ago. It topped out at 92k words. That's a lot of typing, people.

Now... editing. Bah. As it turns out, I'm extremely verbose and repetitive. I've only edited ~10% (guessing) of the manuscript and I've already knocked it down to 85k. Here's hoping I don't throw out the baby with the bathwater... or cut off my nose to spite my face... or one of those weird phrases that sound smart but also dumb at the same time...

Sometimes I am just staring at my manuscript thinking... WTF were you thinking, Carls?

This shit is a mess and not even interesting!

And it makes your eyes hurt!

But I really love editing. It gives me a chance to get rid of the crap so that a shiny, beautiful gem is left over.

Writing Music

Band of Horses - The Funeral
Slow, building, then entirely epic around 1:22 and beyond.


Damien Juardo - Sheets
Contemplative, melancholy, emotional, rough

Writing Action Scenes

Guess what? I've never been in combat. (Duh).
Never shot anyone.
Never fought anyone hand to hand.
Never aggressively handled a knife.

...but I have to write about it.

Which means a few things. First, I've got to go paintballing. Yes, I'm using writing a book as a way to justify thrilling outings as "work." So, I will be going paintballing for "research purposes." No, I won't be inviting my 6 foot 7 boyfriend to do any hand to hand combat research, though.

Second, it means I have to do a lot of research. There's nothing worse than writing an action scene that pisses off people who've really been in combat. Here are a few links for action scene research:

Make Your Fight Scenes 20% Cooler (Use your environment, different mediums, different levels)

Basic Ground Fighting Techniques (Army Study Guide)

Writing Fighting (Use line breaks, avoid compound action, avoid excessive linguistical jargon [and phrases like linguistical jargon], short sentences, heightened senses [smell/sound], choreograph it in your head or on paper,

Writing Better Action Scenes (Build up to the action, kill the followers, LOTS of advice on how to portray the antagonist accurately)

How To Write Action Scenes (Slow it down like a slow-mo movie)

Six Flaws in Combat Scenes

Iraq Combat (Short anecdotes about what it really feels like)

On Love and Triangles

...or perhaps just Love Triangles.

I was browsing around on Absolute Write today and stumbled on a thread about whether love triangles were overdone. I'll warn you, there's somewhat of a love triangle in Duplicity (the working title of the novel I'm 89k deep in). Someone redirected me to Carrie Ryan's post about love triangles (read it here).

Here's what she had to say...

To me, a love triangle done right isn't about a female* character's affections bouncing back and forth between two men, it's about her internal struggle within herself as she figures out who *she* wants to be and what's important to her.  This internal struggle then gets reflected externally as she wars within herself and grows.  And that's the heart of any book -- a character's growth from first page to the last.

Writing Song

Today's writing song = "One O Six" (A.N.D.Y. Remix) by  Jupiter

By the way, I waited 45 minutes to get on the Blue Line this morning. FORTY FIVE. It took me a total of 1 hour and 15 minutes to get in (it usually takes about 25). Public transit, I smite thee...

Now, back to work!

I'm Writing A Book!

In fact, I should say I have written a book. It's 89,000 words. That's a lot of carpal tunnel, folks. And there are still 4 scenes I'm considering adding.

89,000 is too long for a Young Adult book. Meaning I'll have to cut, especially if I add those scenes.

I shall have to cut MERCILESSLY!

They say writing a book is like making a baby. Well, I'm about to cut that baby up, and it feels so wrong.

Pray for me to hash away smartly!

P.S. Yes, I've had far too much tea today.