The green edits are done!

I originally allowed myself thirty days for this part of the process, but did it in fifteen! As I got closer to the end, I reduced the date goal, because I like tidy graphs…

Normally when I edit, I meander around – reading, adding notes, watching TV, going back over the same parts again and again to get them perfect… on the first set of edits, I hear you ask? Well, yes, I am was a perfectionist.

But, no more! I’ve finally learnt. I worked steadily through the comments I made, although some of them still exist because I’m not quite sure how to execute them just yet.

There have been a lot of other changes though, a lot of additions (including, finally, a character’s reaction to an event that affected her deeply, but I ignored in my first draft!), and an awful lot of crossing out. However, the opening chapter is still shockingly bad, and the last chapter is dragging – but that’s okay. In fact, they might even still exist when I’m ready to share with my beta readers.

In the past, I have only shared my work when I’ve gone through extensive drafts, and made it as perfect as I can get. If people so much as point out a spelling mistake or punctuation anomaly, I’m devastated. I consider this to be a huge step forward in my writing attitude.

 

These edits have been nicknamed the green edits, because of the green pen. The next edits will be the red edits. And, because I do love a chaotic-looking draft, I’ll be making the changes on this same print-out!

Years ago – stop me if I’ve told you this before – my favourite subject at school was technical drawing (Yes! I’m so old, that was actually a separate and specific subject!) I loved the lines, the angles, the pencil chaos that became clear when my black pen – in two different thicknesses – created the picture. All the pencil marks were essential to get the right lines in the right place, but eventually they were erased and my cube (in my first year) or my detailed house floorplan (in my last year) was revealed.

I approach editing a manuscript in the same way, and it’s so satisfying when I see the final story revealing itself.

Next up: the red edits, trying to get my first and last chapters improved, and possibly extend the length. It may not be a very long novel – some of my recent reads have been under 50,000 – but I’m currently at 39k. That’s a good novella length, but I’m desperate to get a novel under my belt – my long-term goal depends upon it!

How many different colours do you use?

Do you edit by hand, or prefer to do it all on the computer?

Reading my first draft

Since starting this blog, I’ve been unsure of the direction, but as I have decided to attempt to write, and have ready to submit, by the end of the year, I’m going to blog each step of my new-found process, under the Novel in a Year category tag. If you read this post first, it’ll all make more sense! I hope you’ll find it interesting and/or helpful 🙂

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And now, for today’s update:

As planned, I read my draft with the eyes of a beta-reader. When I beta for someone, I use the Comments on Word, and I hope I make helpful comments as well as highlight the really good stuff. I know I let a little sarcasm slip in too. I pretended I was reading someone else’s work, and acted accordingly.

It took me six days to complete the read-through, and then act on the easily sorted issues. A lot of my comments simply said delete or unnecessary, which is pretty self-explanatory. Some of them were paragraphs that I could slot into the work at the appropriate point, and some will be longer and harder to solve. There’s a timeline problem relatively early on, a rather large omission of someone’s reaction to a particular event and a whole lot of underwriting practically all the way through.

To be honest, the underwriting is a lifelong problem, so that wasn’t a shock!

Here are a few of the comments I’ve made:

Remember how hard this was to get the right reveal here? Well, it hasn’t worked. Try again

This all needs to be re-written… you know that glazed over look you get when you read something hideously boring… yeah, that

So they’re not going to talk about last night? Jo tried to murder a painting, and he’s okay with that?

Really? We’re smiling at hats, are we? Why not at the coffee, or that mop in the corner?

My next task is to print out the manuscript and mark up where the deeper changes need to be made, where a couple of chapters need to be moved, and to write new sections so that the other changes make sense. I can’t wait to get my fountain pen out and jot notes all over the pages!

Once again, I’ll be using the NaNoWriMo site and giving myself four weeks to complete this part. I might even work out all the stages for the rest of the year, so I’m not doing quite so much guessing about the deadlines I should be imposing.

How nice are you to yourself when you read your own work?

How long does it take you to write a book?

How many drafts do you take? (My personal best is somewhere in the 20s!)

Draft finished, feeling accomplished

At the beginning of the year, I decided I was going to write a novel much quicker than I’d ever written one before – in a year. Completed, beta-read, edited and ready to submit.

My WIPs tend to take several years, malingering through many rewrites without much of a plan, and at the beginning of the year, I decided – finally – that this was stupid.

And, coincidentally, at the same time these decisions were occurring, the NaNoWriMo web site announced that people could create their own goals whenever they wanted. So I set up a goal – to write 40,000 words in 90 days.

Today, I finished – 8 days (and 3,600 words) short of the deadline, but the draft is complete, and I am very happy with it, as it stands!

As you can see, after a good start, I had a bit of a… ahem, break. A couple of short stories took priority, and there were probably a few days of Olympic-style procrastination and hot chocolate drinking with friends. However I think I rallied quite well.

There’s something satisfying in recording my words in this way. I usually use a spreadsheet, but that doesn’t include an end date, it just lets me write and write and write… In fact, it was precisely that deadline which forced me back to the WIP on day 57.

My next step is to do something else I’ve never done before – I’m going to read my draft the way I beta-read other people’s – complete with sarky asides and random comments.

Of course, I’ll be setting a goal for that too – 132 pages, 5 pages an hour (because I’ve never made an hourly goal before, so I’m not sure how long it will take) – 26 hours should do it.

Have you seen this feature on the NaNo site? Would you consider using it?

How do you keep yourself accountable?

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To all A-Zers! If you’re in the middle of the challenge, thanks for visiting – I know you’ve got many other places to be. I’ll be reading your posts with interest, but I probably won’t comment very much, because I know how overwhelming this time of the year can be. I thought long and hard about joining in again this year, but my WIP challenge is more compelling. Have fun!

 

 

 

Reasons Why I Should Have Planned

I’m not a planner. I feel stifled if I have plot to fulfill, instead I usually start with a title and the very last line. I sit with my pen poised and let the words flow. I go back and add chapters where needed, go forward to write a killer line, backwards to add a bit of foreshadowing. And the whole thing comes together. It’s a long process. Where other authors can have a book written within a year, mine take a little longer. In some cases they take… ahem, years and years.

My current novel is supposed to be a mashup of a character/plot that’s been on the back-burner since the early 2000s, and the story I wrote for last year’s NaNoWriMo, with some other stuff that I’ve started and abandoned within a couple of weeks.

Except, I have a main character that is both named and nameless, in past and present tense, first and third person. She lives in London, a nameless city, on the coast. She’s always an artist and has just won an art award, or won it years ago. Her current exhibition is both on display and cancelled. She has a lodger but is lodging, and a sister who is in varying degrees of existence.

I’m staring at these pages, completely overwhelmed – in some cases, reading the same scene written in different ways, with different outcomes. I have two folders that have an abundance of Post-It notes to remind me where I think that scene might fit, or not fit, or needs to fit.

And I don’t know what do to… Apart from go back to basics and write a plan. Or give up altogether and bake a cake.

Tips, advice and hugs all appreciated right now 🙂

Slip-sliding away

Good morning, lovely people! What a great day. The sun is shining, and it’s just above freezing. On our walk this morning, the grass was solid with thick frost, the river was mirror-still, and there was a beautiful river mist clinging to the valley and edge of Plymouth.

There are no photos, because it was far too cold to take my gloves off so I could operate the camera. So here’s a picture of Artoo before we left, at the moment he’d given up hope of ever going for a walk ever again…

I tend to spend these walks thinking about my writing plan for the day, and today I was completely overwhelmed by all the things I want to do and the time I have to do it. I have:

• my NaNoWriMo novel to develop into a proper novel – including all those bouts of utter paranoia that it’s the worst idea in the world (which is time-consuming)
• 4 short story competitions I want to enter within the next month, which also need writing or re-writing, and then several more over the months after that
• to keep up with blogs I follow, new and old, because I’ve realised I’ve lost touch with some of the amazing people that have helped me so far (and probably don’t even know it). And I’m worried that my move from Blogger to WordPress means that some of them have given up on me
• re-write a novella I re-wrote badly last year. Except, it heavily features a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship, which also happens to be be the basis of the novel I’m writing. I don’t like the idea of writing two stories which could be tucked nicely into a genre together like that – I want to do different things

As you can see, this isn’t really a to-do list, it’s an overcoming-my-issues list, which will be a lot harder.

I’d love some feedback – especially on the Blogger/Wordpress issue, and the fixation on mothers I seem to have at the moment.

 

Goodreads Book Giveaway

You. I. Us.

by Annalisa Crawford

Giveaway ends January 27, 2017.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

 

Revising with Rebecca Bradley

Today, I am over on Rebecca Bradley’s blog discussing my revision process – discover what state my NaNo novel is in right now and what I’m currently drinking!

A couple of years ago, I shared my first draft process, so it was great to be able to explain my next stage. Writing down exactly how I write is quite eye-opening. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone shares my methods!