Tag: novel editing

Findings

Editing and revising the second book, Entangled LEREs, is about ninety percent completed. I’ve come to a challenging chicane where the disparate stories and characters are brought together to race into a new direction, which is where the third book, Six (with Seven) begins.

I find that as I edit the beta draft, creating the first draft — something other humans can read and comprehend, rather than streaks of coherency marred by stretches of babble — that I refine my quest about what I want from the story. In the beginning was a concept. Characters jumped out. Ideas jumped in. Arcs were spun. Lives and plots were developed and explored.

Now I’ve sharpened my understanding of what I wrote from the morass of thoughts, energy, and application that we call fiction writing, and I crystallize goals about what I’m exploring, and think, this is what I want to do with this book, and this is what I want to do with this series. As I’m just reaching the series midpoint, that might change again. Unlike other times that I thought things about the series and books and documented them in Epiphany.doc to help me understand, I understand enough that I’m not impelled to write this up. Incomplete States is moving from imagination-ware to a concrete state. Its becoming tangible. Recording isn’t required.

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

 

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The Ascendancy

Once again, none of my novels were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Naturally, I was distraught. It almost put me off of my coffee. Almost, but not really. It’s their loss.

Despite that oversight, my spirits are rising. Nothing to do with anything tangible; it’s just that time of my cycle. It’s beautiful weather, and seems like a wonderful to day write and edit.

As part of my lazing about this AM, I read a 2011 Paris Review article, “Catch-18”,  by Erica Heller about her father, Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22. Several passages interested me, but I want to highlight two.

At one point when Dad was writing Catch-22 (he wrote it for nine years, which turned out to be something of an average gestation period for his books), only once and quite late in the game do I remember him becoming discouraged, fed up with the writing process and how long it was taking to finish. This brief, uncharacteristic bit of self-doubt caused him to actually set the book aside and try to find distractions. I recall seeing him watching television in the evenings, but his boredom and exasperation was immediate. Within a week, he’d become so sullen that soon he was scurrying exultantly back into the waiting arms of Catch, telling my mother that he honestly couldn’t imagine how anyone survived who didn’t have a novel to write.

It is hard to imagine not having a novel to write. That’s my primary survival/coping mechanism. Computer games help, along with coffee, wine, and beer.

When Catch was finally taking off, about a year after publication, my parents, who had now moved us to a much larger, far grander apartment, would often jump into a cab late at night and ride around to the city’s leading bookstores in order to see the jaunty riot of red, white, and blue and the crooked little man—the covers of “the book,” piled up in towers and pyramids, stacked in so many store windows. Was anything ever again as much fun, I wonder, for either of them? They would come home giddy and very late and go to sleep with their heads still full of the potent magic of a dream poised right on the cusp of becoming true.

That sounds fun and real, and is the kind of thing that I dream of doing, cruising places looking for copies of my books and evidence that my dream is becoming true.

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

 

 

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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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Grounding Myself

Here we go, more self-indulgence. What’s new? This is a vanity blog with a primary purpose of understanding myself and my thinking through writing and coping with my writing efforts, with secondary purposes of entertaining myself and sharing ideas with others.

I struggled with how much to share today. I’m telling what the series, Incomplete States, is about. I decided that I typically don’t have many visitors, so I have little to worry about. I expect this post to get eight views and five likes, and perhaps two comments.

I was thinking about all of this in connection with where I stand with editing and revising the second novel, and by extension, the series. I felt a need to ground myself about where I’m at in the series, where it is, and where it goes.

To begin, consider three questions.

  1. Do you ever feel disconnected from your life, as though things have happened that you don’t remember or understand?
  2. Have you ever thought, didn’t I already do this?
  3. Is there ever a time that you feel like you’re a completely different person, resulting in a struggle to fit in? Perhaps you think, I was a male, and now I’m a female.

If you feel that you’ve experienced these things, it’s possible that you have an entangled LERE. A LERE is a Life-Experience-Reality-Existence. Entangled LEREs are caused by Chi-particle issues. Chi-particles are imaginary quantum particles that are lack mass and energy and travel faster than light. As they slow, they acquire mass and energy, becoming a fundamental quantum particle before devolving into some aspect of classic physics. Chi-particles exist as isotopes and variants just as elements often exist as isotopes and variants, which affect their behavior.

This is the situation that my characters experience in the four book series, Incomplete States.

I was exploring and thinking about the series as I walked this morning. Specifically, I thought, oh my God, what have I done? 

No, that’s not true. That was inserted for comedic effect. It’s sometimes true that I think this, but that wasn’t the case today.

Today brought a more rational review of the books and the story arc. I’d conceptualized, what if there is only now, no past, no future, and no cause and effect? What if the arrows of time are a convenient commodity we use to explain our existence (including our Universe) because it fits with our organic biology and creates a simple framework for being?

When I think about this, I’m forced to think about multi-verses, but also to challenge the ideas that our Universe is expanding. We believe we observe its expansion through light shifts because that cause and effect is the prevalent belief of our existence, along with the arrows of time that go from the past to the future, shooting through now. In my reality, E = mc2 is a fallacy that we cling to because it fortifies our foundations of being.

We hang onto the concepts of a greater being in the same way.

None of these things are easy to lose. Grappling with not accepting them and actively rejecting them is hard to keep in mind when you’re writing. I kept wanting to return to cause and effect and our universe’s foundations.

As I played with those concepts, I introduced characters who were undergoing the symptoms expressed in the opening questions. Unlike you, they often also remember what else happened. They remember other worlds and other lives that they lived and then come to a grudging grasp that they’re still living in these other worlds and lives.

All of this is told through their stories. Throughout, the things that happen to them cause gaps in logic, cause and effect, and expectations. They endure twisted memories and confused understanding, resulting in a knowledge vacuum.

Humans dislike vacuums. We always want to explain what’s going on via some mechanism. That mechanism can be via magic, religion, science, and technology. Those are the broad categories. People also suspect they live dream existences, but struggle to understand which part of their LERE is the dream existence, and which is the reality, coping with the possibilities that maybe both are dreams, or maybe both are realities. They struggle with plots to explain what’s happening to them, plots that involve governments, conspiracies, virtual realities, and other intelligent life forms.

The existences, experiences, and coping become a huge matrix, but the matrix is different for each of the six main characters. The delta between their matrices fluctuates.

That’s where the tension resides, evolving into wonder about which theory filling the vacuum is correct, and how the stories will resolve.

I had several writing rules I employed while writing these four books. Chapters were addressed as episodes. Cause and effect can be perceived, but readers can’t depend on it. Consistently inconsistent logic would be employed. Life — or reality — is a vacuum, and our search for understanding and explaining it all is a farce. What we interpret as life through our experiences forms a reality that’s a slice of existence that doesn’t linger.

I don’t treat my science as junk science. I treat it seriously in the novels. I don’t expect it to hold up to scientific reviews or validate string theory, loop quantum gravity, or the theory of everything. I offer no math to support my science, although I’ll point out that in my concept, anything anyone offers to support or tear down my science is wrong because of the inherent observer’s bias held by being in and part of this universe.

Yeah, it’s fun. It makes me laugh. That’s what writing’s all about, innit? Entertaining ourselves.

Hopefully, after reading the series, the typical reader will think, “I see.” And then they’ll wonder, “But what is it that I see?”

 

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So, Progress.

My editing slowed down in book 2 (Entangled LEREs) of the Incomplete States series. I blame it on three things.

  1. Life distractions
  2. A poorly written chapter
  3. Mischievous muses
  4. Misophonia

Life distractions happen. Part of it this week was enduring my normal descent into the dark troughs of my being. It’s a regular thing. I scowl, swear, and endure it, hoping to emerge as a perkier and happier person on the other end (which I do) while trying to reduce the dark side’s impact (which I barely manage to do) and reduce the time I’m affected (which I don’t do). I shrug. It’s over until the next episode.

The poorly written chapter is another matter. The first time I read the chapter, “A Dark and Stormy Night”, I finished confused about what I’d read. I immediately suspected that it’s probably not good when the author doesn’t understand what they wrote. A second reading was required, and then a third to drill down into why I was confused and what I can do about it. Two days were then spent on fixing it before I continued.

During that period, I reckoned that the changes were not significant but that once I’m done editing the four books, I’ll have a complete set of the first draft. Then I’ll edit and revise it again.

I had resigned myself to no writing like crazy while I’m editing the series. The muses, though, have become restless and bored. That makes them mischievous. Out of this, they’ve begun tossing out novel suggestions. They often use, “Wouldn’t it be fun to write,” as their opening prelude.

Yes, I enjoy hearing their ideas. It’s stimulating and exciting, which makes it harder for me to rein the muses in and gently tell them, “I’ll keep that in mind.” See, the muses always want me to drop everything else and start pursuing their idea right now. I don’t want to discourage them, but I need to be disciplined and finish this series and publish it first. This is growth and maturity for me, because just two years ago, I would have let the muses ride me like a horse and answer their spurs.

Misophonia (in my terms, based on my limited knowledge) is a strong emotional reaction to sounds. I have such a reaction to people smacking their lips while eating, or walking around humming and singing to themselves in pubic places like coffee shops. I’ve always blamed Mom for this behavior in me because I thought I’d learned my reactions from her. Mom was always snapping at us about the way we ate or chewed our gum, or for humming, turning pages loud, or making clicking noises.

As I do with things that bother me, I sought information and stumbled across misophonia. That linked page states, “The latest research suggests it is sensory processing issue within the brain. Misophonia elicits immediate negative physiological responses to certain sounds that most people don’t seem to notice. This sensitivity can have an adverse effect on a person’s life causing problems with activities of daily living.”

Well, shucks, that’s exactly what I endured this week. Twice, a particular woman came in, sat down at the table next to me, and hummed and sang to herself. Except for when she spoke, she hummed, even when others spoke to her. She hummed whether she was sitting, standing, or walking.

It drove me nuts. I recognized that it’s not her being inconsiderate, and that murdering her or growling at her wouldn’t help anything. As I processed her sounds, I realized this could be a coping mechanism. It could be subconscious.

It still annoyed me. I struggled to cope. I looked for somewhere else to sit (but also resented that I would need to move because of her). 

So, I didn’t cope well, and it affected my editing. She’s not here today. I’ll shrug it off while researching how to cope.

Now, I’m ravenous for lunch and I’m done writing like crazy editing like crazy, for at least one more day.

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Crystallizing

I can certainly tell that Entangled LEREs was the first book written in the Incomplete States series. (Back then, the working title was The Long Summer.) I’m a third of the way through it in the initial editing and revising process, and I’ve deleted four chapters. Those chapters, written while I was exploring and developing the novel’s concept, no longer fit the overall story arc. To keep them in would be indulging myself.

So, off they went. The muse(s) didn’t argue at all, so I must have made the right decisions. Still, I saved each chapter intact as a file, with a note about where they came from, and updated the Editing Checklist to show what I did, and why.

The chapters were fascinating remnants of the genesis of the initial concept and the finalized concept. I remembered struggling daily as I wrote, trying to decide, what is this novel about? As the finalized concept crystallized, one novel became two novels, and then burgeoned into a series. Characters and their tales, plot twists and settings all arose. I didn’t include everything; sometimes I knew that what I was writing was writing to think, exercises to help me understand what I was learning and where I was going. They were saved, too, just in case I later veered.

In point of fact, the largest document of the twenty-five documents (including the four books) I created while developing this series is the document called “Circle (working doc)”. At five hundred pages, it’s one hundred ten thousand words and seventy-nine chapters. Some of the chapters made their way into the beta version of the four books. Many have notes about my intentions when they were written about where they should be in the narrative. Several of the chapters were written as snapshots of action, outcomes, or discussions between characters to help me understand the story arc but included information that I felt shouldn’t be ‘given’ to the reader.

They might still end up in the final first draft of the four books. I don’t know, and won’t know until I’ve completed this phase of editing and revision.

That’s what it’s all about.

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I Find

The first two parts of Entangled States, ten chapters, are like reaching a coast. The direction doesn’t matter. You hit the stretch where the land and sea meet. It’s turbulent, with crashing waves and hissing, seething waters. Taking it all must be done in pieces. There is the sea and the land, and there’s also the sky. Each exercises its own elements, colors, and behaviors. Once you pass this borderland, you’re released from the complications inherent to progressing from sea to land and freer to relax and take more in.

Now into part three of the book, it settles down again. I remember writing all of this, and recall thinking about the parts, and the placement of these chapters and scenes, and how they’ll interact. At that point, it was like being too close to a pointillism piece of art. Distance is needed for the colors to blend and become something more than blobs.

Wild, to think, while writing it, I saw these blobs and strokes, and applied them, and now I need to step back to comprehend the whole. I was realizing the whole on one level while I already saw and comprehended it on another level. Then, not so wild, as I write to help clarify and understand what I think.

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Going On

Have you ever seen a movie or read a book about a prisoner who uses a spoon or other small implement to chip away their rock or cement prison and eventually escape? I was thinking about that the other day as I was editing Entangled LEREs and realized, that’s not how it feels editing the second book in the Incomplete States series.

It also doesn’t feel like I’m struggling to move the needle. Nor does it feel like I’m climbing a mountain or swimming an ocean.

It feels pretty damn good.

I miss writing like crazy each day, truly. I resent, too, that it’ll take sooooo looong before these novels will be published. By ‘sooooo looong’, I mean like months or more. Yes, I’m indulging in some hyperbole to expose my natural impatience.

I’m not good at this persistent, slow stuff. I eat fast, drive fast, think fast, and talk fast. I like doing things fast. I like being intense and immersed.

But, I’m enjoying this leisurely editing and revising. I’m reading other books as I edit, novels that are best sellers or prize winners, prizes like the Man Booker, Peabody, and Pulitzer, or books by authors who won a Nobel Prize for Literature. I used to avoid reading such lofty others while I’m writing or editing. Correcting myself, I used to avoid reading most published literature while I was reading and writing because I often felt that my writing could never achieve such heights, and it depressed and demoralized me.

I’m more confident about it now. While I still enjoy and admire the aforementioned sort of books, I’m not cringing from my efforts when I go back and forth between the two. More often, when I find something special by someone else that I’m reading, I pause to understand the passage’s impact on me and explore what the author did and how they did it, hoping that I can learn how to do it.

The process has helped. I can see improvement in my writing. I sometimes find beauty or insights in my work that startles me.

Like many writers, I’ve found that writing is a progression. With a little talent and heavy loads of persistence and determination, we can improve what we’re revealing and how it’s revealed as we tell the stories that flow through us. This progression shines in the editing process. Further away from the fiery crucible of creativity where the flow is so intense, I can apply the lessons that I perceive. I’m more mindful. While I’m doing this, my appreciation for the diverse processes of writing/creativity and writing/editing/revising increases. As with many facets of our existence, it’s a spectrum.

Of course, on the obverse of this coin, when I read portions of my earlier published works, I cringe. There’s a plan afoot to edit and revise some of that stuff stirring in my head. What’s that? Don’t look back? You might have a point.

Time to resume editing like crazy.

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Editing & Rewards

I’ve learned more about myself, again. I’m happy to report this. I think it’s important to recognize that we’re always changing. That means that we always have some mystery about who we are that we need to confront and resolve. (At least I do, but I suppose others like to leave some mystery to themselves.) Some changes are as slow to witness as a snail’s progress across a patio. Other changes can be seen like a meteor’s flash in the August night.

One thing that I’ve learned is why I like editing, a lesson learned and forgotten. Writing like crazy in my finest efforts is primal, immersive, and intense. It’s also rewarding. Reward is associated with solving problems that are created as part of exploring the plot and understanding the characters. Reward also comes from the tangible progress of putting words onto pages until hundreds of pages are done and a novel is completed. That’s very tangible and satisfying.

Editing, though, lacks that sense of progress and reward of writing like crazy. I miss both of those things. But I’ve found that the editing process grounds me. As it’s more relaxing than writing because it’s less intensive, it has a gentler and more reflective quality in it.

Writing like crazy is also exhausting. That might seem strange to people who don’t know how much thinking is involved in writing. Editing, being less exhausting, leaves me with more free energy. Weirdly, I don’t know how to use that energy. I end up reading more. Conversely, reading more triggers the write-like-crazy impulse in me. But I’m editing, so I need to shun that. It’s a frustrating dynamic.

There is a sense of progress inherent in editing. It’s measured in the number of pages and chapters read, the number of notes made to check on this, and the number of those items that become resolved and checked off. But creative writing is problem-solving; editing isn’t, to me, so different areas of my brain are engaged. When I’m editing, I’m mostly reading. Remembering, I’m reading and editing my own work. I’m familiar with it. That’s exactly why others need to edit it for me when I’m satisfied that the draft is sufficiently complete to hand it off to someone to edit.

Done editing for the day. Not a great deal was accomplished in the sense that I didn’t cover many pages. (Ten, actually, when I go back to see how many I read.) That was because I discovered a name was spelled incorrectly. I was surprised to find that I’d spelled it wrong in the manuscript and in my bible of information. Global find and replace was needed, but to reach that point required research and decisions about which spelling to use.

That’s editing though, finding and correcting the mistakes, along with revising the story to improve flow and clarify.

At least in my mind.

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