Tag: editing process

SUCKS, In Caps

Decided to make a change in my novel in progress. This is Book Four, An Undying Quest, in the Incomplete Series. 

I’m not certain but I overwrote the existing file without creating a backup. Worse, I’d decided to make this change without first backing up my work, violating my cardinal rule – backup, backup, backup, and save often.

Realizing my error immediately, I went into recovery mode. The results were depressing. No ASD files, no WKP files, or TMP files were found as a match for the initial version. No previous versions found. The file wasn’t found on One Drive.

Unbelievable. Three hundred fifty pages of the revised novel were lost.

Back to square two. I have the beta draft in its raw form. I’d started revising on October 18th, so it’s only a few weeks of work, and about half the novel.

Now I’ll walk and bash myself for being hasty and thoughtless, and take some deep breaths. It’s not the world’s end, or civilization’s end, or anything like that. It’s just a foolish setback. I’ll just need to reset myself, go back, and begin again, with some bitter lessons learned.

Done editing for today. Cheers

 

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Surgery

Today’s editing was like surgery. I wrote Book Four, An Undying Quest, in a coffee-stoked and idea-infused blaze. Feeding me, the muses took me in different directions simultaneously. One over-arching arc was eventually uncovered as definitive. Excising paragraphs, merging, and clarifying the one great arc and staying true to the final concept and story involved a lot of reading, thinking, and revising.

Thank god for coffee. Terrific day of writing editing like crazy. Time to call it a day.

I might go get a doughnut.

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The Heat

Now we come to the part of the novel that I say, “Huuuhhh?”

I’m editing and revising the fourth novel, An Undying Quest, in the Incomplete States series. I remember writing these chapters last December and January of this year. First, there were five chapters, which became ten, a reflection of the multiple POV. These chapters were being written in parallel in a mad heat of intensity. The muses were crazy and insistent during that time, and I sat back and typed as fast as I could.

Typing as fast as I can leads to a lot of stumbling over the keys, and a great deal of swearing as I miss a stroke, realize it and back up, muttering, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” as I do. The chapters were interesting to edit in the first pass after writing them because sometimes the tense changed. In reflection of that, I came to see how I was sometimes doing method writing, imagining myself to be the character to take in their senses, know their thoughts, and act correctly. I wonder, in retrospect, how that writing process affects my relationships and interactions with others. It intrigues me, too, that I can’t remember what I wrote, but I remember writing and editing it.

The weave pattern of these chapters means they’re more challenging to read and edit. The twists give me pause. To track them, to ensure they’re correct and consistent, delivering the end of that stretch while staying true to the concept, arc, and ending, required me to drop back and create another document. The document’s contents are, “This happened here,” and, “That happened now.”

Yes, it’s tricky, but it delights me. That worries me that I’m not being objective.

Yes, it’s tricky.

Time to write edit like crazy, at least one more time.

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Impulse

I considered my plans for today last night.

It was about midnight. Today, from what I saw, would be part of a continuum, another day of editing and revising. While I’m happy to make progress and I enjoy what I do, sometimes I get tired of the unending routine. Sometimes I long for a break.

Then I brightened because, hey, I was beginning to edit the fourth and final book in the Incomplete States series.

While I’d been thinking these things, I’d been preparing to close down the computer for the day. Instead, I opened the file for the fourth book’s cover. I regarded and admired it for a while. I’d created covers for the four books as carrots, to make the books seem more tangible and remind me of my goals. With covers, the effort seems to have more promise. It seems more real.

Sitting down, I opened the book’s Word document and began reading and editing.

There wasn’t any plan behind this impulse. One chapter began two. Soon, without me noticing, it was one thirty in the morning. I’d read and edited six chapters. Short chapters, I’d worked through but forty pages. This is a six hundred page, one hundred fifty thousand word draft. There’s a lot more to go.

Despite complaints from my butt cheeks, eyes, neck, and hands, and a more sensible side reminding me that I need to sleep, I didn’t want to stop. I was enjoying what I was reading, and pleased that I’d written it. But prudence finally won.

Now, guess what? Time to write and edit like crazy, at least one more time. I think I may need more coffee.

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Another Fun Session

It was fun editing Six (with Seven) today. Written over a year ago, I’d forgotten the surreal aspects that the book took on at that time, dealing with a character’s memory, sex, and imagination as separate entities. I had fun with the arguments that they had among themselves and Philip K. Dick flavor infused in some of the dialogue and situations.

The character’s name is Madi (Madison) Handley. Because she’s a pirate, she modeled her memory after a pirate, Grutte Piers, and insists on having a parrot, J.R. As Handley’s existence streamed into my awareness, her name came from another blogger (J.R. Handley) and a barista (Madi), with the parrot named after J.R. Handley as well.

Her story is running in parallel to Pram’s terra-forming story, and I alternated between the two in the chapters in this section of the novel. I have a lot of affection for Pram and Handley, and love discovering their lives in space.

Coffee gone, and damn, I’m hungry. Time to stop writing editing like crazy, at least for today.

2

Time, Energy, and Patience

Incomplete States is a science-fiction infused historic series of possible futures. Book Three, Six (with Seven), now in editing and revision, also focuses on another intelligent species.

They are much different from Humans and the other species encountered in this historic series. Their culture, mores, and social structures aren’t like Humans or the rest. This makes editing them a powerful challenge, which translates into time, energy, and patience. Clarity, coherency, and consistency is demanded. This is the fourth day of editing and revising this thirteen-page chapter.

Time, energy, and patience has become my new editing and revising motto. I used to race through writing books and then become impatient with the editing and revising phases. I’ve developed a more acute respect for how editing and revising fit into the writing and publishing process as I’ve written more books.

The other aspect that’s found new respect in me is reading . On Sunday, a friend asked me, “How do you know when you’re done writing the novel after editing and revising it?” I told her, “That’s when the reader takes over. I write what I enjoy reading. If I, as the reader, am happy, then I’m done.” Of course, that’s when the professional editors take over.

Thinking about my answer later increased my appreciation for how reading helps writing. If I’m writing for a reader, me. I want that reader — me — to keep expanding their appreciation of what they’re reading. As I do, what I read and enjoy permeates the reader/writer/creator membrane. So expanding what I read, enjoy, and appreciate improves my writing and creating skills.

I like casting a wide net over my reading choices. I have favorite authors and genres, but enjoy exploring. I just finished reading Red Shirts (John Scalzi, 2011). Now I’m beginning Less (Andrew Sean Green, 2017, Pulitzer Prize). I’m still reading The Order of Time (Carlo Rovelli, 2018). That last book requires many pauses to think about what I’m reading, and revisiting parts of the book.

Of course, I’m also still reading Six (with Seven). I must read it to edit it.

Time to write edit like crazy, at least one more time.

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Another Writing Update

Editing and revising continues on Book Three of Incomplete States, a novel titled, Six (with Seven). 

While remaining ambivalent about the title, I’m feeling more attached to it as I edit. I’m ambivalent about it because I conjure negative reactions from others about the title. I imagine that it will sour some because it’s different (gasp). But reading, editing, and revising the book has brought me closer to the title. I understand why that title came to me, and why it works. I also swung back toward ignoring and dismissing the naysayers, which basically goes along the lines, “Fuck you.” I like to think that they’ll be so in love with the series by the third book that they won’t care about the title.

See? I can be an dewy-eyed optimist.

Editing and revising Six (with Seven) hasn’t been all coffee and cookies. One chapter obviously needed major reconstruction. I struggled to fix it for several days. Then, one morning, I opened it and realized, the chapter didn’t work because everything had evolved away from it. It’d been an early, exploratory chapter. Now, it didn’t fit.

It still took some time to cut it. I liked the characters and the writing. It was damn prettified. I also worried that I was cutting it out of expediency. The muses didn’t agree, so I cut it. I saved it…just in case.

Once that chapter was removed, everything else fit together like fine tongue-and-groove construction. I loped through several chapters a day. It’s a fine thing to enjoy what you’ve written.

Enough patting myself on the back. Coffee has been downed, but this is free refills Friday. Time to write edit like crazy, at least one more time.

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Book Three

“Deep breath,” I told myself, and scoff, mocking myself with, “Why?” Editing and revising the first two books in the Incomplete States series had gone well. The weeks of editing and revising had flown past. This is fun and rewarding. Yes, there are challenges, but no deep breaths are required, just time, space, and coffee. Fortunately, I have all three.

Word can tell a lot about a document. In this instance, Word tells me that I began this novel on March 3, 2017. I edited it for sixteen hundred twenty-two minutes. It’s two hundred fifty-five KB. At seventy-two thousand, nine hundred seventy-nine words, it’s over twenty-five thousand words smaller than each of the first two books in the series, Four On Kyrios and Entangled LEREs. The series’ final book, An Undying Quest, is largest at one hundred fifty thousand words.

The third book’s working title is Six (with Seven). I’m ambivalent about that title. I’m not certain that’s this is the final title. I’ll find out while I’m editing it.

Doubt about the series still assails me. Have I told enough for it to make sense, or did I tell too much and bog it down? Is it too chaotic for people, becoming too challenging for them to read? The reader in me felt it read well, but I won’t have a better sense of it all until I finish all four books. That stream of thought amuses me because readers all bring and find their own meanings. Even as I’m doubtful, I’m also optimistic. I think that if readers find the series, they’ll enjoy it. I’m reminded, too, of people I know who read the first book of a series, enjoy and recommend it, but never read another book of the series.

Thinking about the four books, I’ve come across several places where I recall thinking while I was editing, there’s another book there. It seems like another book is always possible.

Meanwhile, the muses are becoming pensive. Novel ideas are erupting. Besides these new ideas, old concepts exist that I want to pursue. Part of this is because, while I’m not writing but focused on editing and revising this series, I’m reading several books a week, which fires up the muses.

While walking yesterday, I thought, this series is a science-fiction infused fictionalized history of the future. That gave me a good laugh.

Okay, time to write edit like crazy, at least one more time.

2

Unabashed Pleasure

Yes, I’m reading my baby, but I’m enjoy what I wrote almost two years ago. My baby in this matter is the second novel, Entangled LEREs, in the four book Incomplete States series. I’m often surprised as I’m reading it, thinking, “I wrote that?” I impress myself, but I was writing to me, and I’m easily impressed, so I wouldn’t be impressed that I’m impressed, if I were you.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve posted something like that. *shrug*. My observation about my writing pleasing me also belies how my writing process works. I usually stream scenes through me. “Release the muses!” I shout, and then write like crazy. Writing scenes are often like encountering a tsunami and being swept away. I know what I wrote and can give you the details, but I don’t recall thinking about it much. I think about it before I start writing and after I stop, but I rarely think about it during the process.

The point is, those words are a first shot at writing the scenes. Editing follows, and polishing, and more editing for continuity and pacing, and polishing and editing. I’m an organic writer, so that scene is often edited to help fit a later narrative that emerges. I learn the characters as I go, so their thoughts and interactions in these scenes are revisited and modified to suit their personalities, motives, and agendas. It’s a long way from the first stream of writing to even the beta draft that I’m editing into a first draft.

It’s also a little scary. As I read through these scenes, I wonder, do these things get sufficiently resolved? I won’t know until the entire series is edited.

I’m not worried about being scared. I suspect that I missed some thins when writing the beta draft of the series. That’s why I edit and revise. If I find that my fear is correct, I’ll edit and revise again, continuing that process until I’m satisfied that I’ve answered the questions in a manner and to a degree that will satisfy the reader, moi.

In an aside, as I’m reading and revising, it’s fun to re-discover how I’ve integrated friends and family’s names and segments of their lives into my fiction. For example, a comet that breaks up and destroys a planet is named Santella-Klements. The first is another part of the extended family and includes cousins close to me growing up while Klements is a friend’s last name.

Okay, time to write edit like crazy, at least one more time.

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A Good Day

Today was a wonderful editing and revising day, mostly because there was little of either required. It’s a good day, I thought.

Having a good day feels like a reward. The bad days must be endured, and they often end up being productive. I mean, by a bad day, a day where I feel tired, depressed, and flirt with thoughts about not writing ever, ever again.

I know, though, that the writing on good, bad, indifferent, and mediocre days isn’t likely to be any different. Bad days mostly refer to my attitude before I start writing, editing, or revising. Once I start and my focus is on my writing, my attitude doesn’t matter.

For all that I know, what I read, edited,and revised today could have been written on a bad day. There’s a good chance of that being true, because I covered almost seventy pages today. I generally write one to two thousand words a day, which typically amount to less than ten pages, depending on dialogue and density. I probably covered a week to two weeks of writing, so there were probably some bad days in there.

Now I’m done writing like crazy editing like crazy. Time to go do other things, like eat.

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