Monthly Archives: January 2010

Finally starting to look like a book

Posted on by Sherri
10

It’s like Narnia in my neighborhood. An (expected) inch of ice and 8 (surprise) inches of snow combined with a low, white cloud cover… I am warm and cozy with Mr. Tumnus and the Beavers (husband and kids) so I’m sure the White Witch will pass right by. Some were not so lucky, like my brother and his wife who have been without power (and therefore heat) for two days. They finally made the treacherous drive to a friend’s house where there is heat, so I am glad for that. When I find the camera cable I’ll post some pics.

About a week ago I mentioned I would start editing my work in progress, going through it the way I would someone else’s. Well I finished that pass, making notes about what goes where, what needed clarification, missing motivation and leaps of logic.Then yesterday I accepted all the changes, unified the formatting, and moved all the in-doc notes to the margin.

I’ve found it’s really helpful to look at this from an editor’s perspective. It lessens the judgement of the work, clears away all that muddy self-doubt and makes decisions easier.

I have a little more to do in this step, but so far I’m on schedule. Barring mental fatigue I’ll get this formatting/cleaning step done by Feb 1, and the next step is implementing all the changes I’ve noted. This could take a couple of weeks, but I’m pumped to be nearing the end.

It’s starting to look like a real manuscript. Frickin’ awesome.

A whole lotta wisdom

Posted on by Sherri
10

I don’t have anything important to say today, but I feel compelled to post. That’s how it is with me; there is no planning, no future posting as some of my more industrious friends may use. There is only the moment. Only the now.

So right now I’m happy to be 39 and happy that I’ll be 40 soon. That sounds so frickin’ old, and sometimes it feels old, like after I’ve been to the park, where sk8rs also hang. Or chill, or whatever they say now. Little did I know at 16 that I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass what the kids say when I was 39. I also had no idea that at 39 I would consider 16-year-olds the dumbest creatures on the planet, and for safety’s sake should be locked in a small room until they turn 18. Having this perspective now makes me wonder what baby boomers think of my demographic.

I realized something as I was pondering my advanced age and wisdom. Most of the wisdom I have, I’ve gained over the past, say, five years. From the time I was born, I went through crap, more crap, still more crap, then BOOM, I’m 30-something and starting to process all that crap. Right? I think most people are that way. We’re young and dumb, and then some time after our brains are physically fully developed (I’ve read this doesn’t happen till our mid-twenties) we start to gain real wisdom.

I went to Wikipedia and looked up life expectancy through the years. They say that at the beginning of the previous century, the life expectancy was only 30–45, and in medieval Britain it was only 20–30! So I thought, “Man, if I lived a few hundred years ago, I’d be just about dead by now. I’d be ancient. The wise old lady of my village.”

Have you noticed how as a society we’re becoming more and more enlightened through the decades? That’s why! We all live long enough to at least have a chance to gain a whole lot of wisdom.

Of course then I wondered if our brains just developed faster back in the days when 30 was old. Experience shapes the brain, right? And if a whole lotta life experience was packed in to a shorter time, maybe 30 was the equivelant to 80 now. That probably was the case to an extent, but I believe we’ve outpaced that. What I think is, people were running around with their undeveloped brains being queens and knights and raising babies and working the land.

That’s what I think.

The editing plan

Posted on by Sherri
8

Sarah commented on the previous post, “I think your editing plan sounds very sensible. I did a total of four passes through my novel, and with each one I felt able to work at a deeper level, as the easier bits were corrected or smoothed out.”

I think I’ll end up with about four passes, too. In this first pass, I’m treating my manuscript like someone else’s, making notes and tracking changes, going through really quickly. World-building notes are going on a piece of paper, and scene-specific notes are going in the margin of the document.

This quick one, then another to implement notes I made in the first. I think that will be the hardest and take the longest.

On another pass I’ll work on dialogue and tightening up, spell checking and all that good stuff, then I’ll send it to betas. And of course there’ll be a pass after that to implement those changes.

And I plan to do that in a month. I figure if I don’t dally on the easier stages I can devote about 20 days to the second stage, the major re-writing. That’s twice as long as authors for Eternal Press (my old editing job) were given to implement changes…but of course mine needs about 3 times the work, and that doesn’t allow for getting burned out. Or for feeling like your uterus is going to explode, which I have found today can seriously curtail your butt-in-chair time.

On schedule so far. Cross your fingers for me.

Oh, and if anyone knows Spanish, I’ve got some questions for you.

Back to work

Posted on by Sherri
9

I’ll begin with a call to prayer. My regular readers are familiar with the Darcs, a husband and wife team who have been tireless supporters of me, my blog, and my writing for a couple of years now. Darcknyt and Darc’sFalcon have brought me many blessings, and I’ll always be grateful for their friendship. I won’t go into detail, but recession-related unemployment has made things hard on them. They still have a home for now. I wish there were something I could do, but of course I don’t have any jobs to offer. All I can do is send a message to the universe that these people need help and trust that work will come in time. I’d appreciate your taking a moment to do the same.

~~~

After finishing the first draft of my WIP, I took a couple of days off to allow a migraine to run its course, as well as to fulfill a critique commitment. Ian’s got a unique spin on the vampire novel and a good story to go along with it. His writing seems so effortless it makes me jealous, but I can’t wait until he snags a publishing contract. This may be the right book at the right time to do just that.

~~~

So now that I’m feeling healthy and free, I’ll start edits on my WIP. I have been using yWriter on this last push to the end, which is based on individual scenes–great for moving big chunks around during organization stages, and then for crafting the scenes themselves. I’ve had trouble with this program in the past because of this chunky quality, but for some reason it was just what I needed for this book.

However, now that I’m finished with the scenes I need to read the book as a whole, and for that I’ve imported it to MS Word, my standard and the industry standard, though that is relaxing. I’ll make a single-shot pass, making notes and correcting typos, re-writing easy stuff as I go through and detailing the hard stuff for the next pass. My biggest trap is indecisiveness, so I’ve vowed to go with my gut on the hard decisions and not over-analyze. Another vow I’ve made is to look at the whole process through a fun lens, rather than fulfilling a duty. Duty crushes my creativity.

Hope you have a lovely weekend.