6-AM Editing Challenge -- Week 5 Recap

What's the 6-AM Editing Challenge? You can read the backstory here, but in a nutshell, it's me getting up at 6-AM every morning and writing, in an attempt to finish edits on my novel, MIRRORPASS, by this summer. Read about my novel on the WIP page.

MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2011

• Up at 10:00 (I’m on break, so this was more so a “catch up on sleep” than “get up at six” day.)
• Writing by 1:00
• Opened Chapter 19 word doc, poked around a minute, was listening to my MIRRORPASS soundtrack and a new song I’ve discovered, “Be The One” by Moby, when I had a curious urge to look at chapter 17. Yes. The one I’ve been procrastinating about.
• Opened chapter 17. Started line edits at 1:30. Realized I was in the perfect mood to tackle this tricky chapter. Edited like crazy. Keyboard trouble slowed down my progress, as did a few pauses for research, but I loved the new way the chapter was turning out.
• By 2:30 I was onto the final scene of the chapter, and had to stop when family came over for Easter.
• Back to writing by 4:30 and continued editing chapter 17.
• Finished chapters 17 and my writing challenge for the day at 5:00! Awesome progress. I managed once again to add 200 words to a chapter (she said, sarcastically) despite having made other cuts throughout the chapter. However, I made some major progress in building up the believability of this chapter. Am pumped. Not expecting to get much work done tomorrow, however, as it’s a work day. So we’ll see.

TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 2011

• Up at 6:30
• What I decided to try and do instead of writing before work was print out hardcopies of material I know needs line edits or review and go over it on my work break. Today, I printed out the next sequence (dark moment!) and reviewed it. That was really helpful; it got me excited about the next bout of revisions.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27th, 2011

• Up at 7:00
• Downstairs and ready to write by 8:00 but had to wait for the computer to open up. Writing by 8:20
• Similar to with Monday, I was listening to my soundtrack and poking around chapter 19 trying to figure out which scenes to merge, when I suddenly knew I wanted to take the pukish scene I wrote last weekend, put it in a new setting, change the argument completely around, and use it as a segue into my final two (already written and pristine scenes.)
• Wrote like mad. It was perfect. All the extra puke writing that I’ve been doing lately worked toward this scene; it got all my ideas in place. This wrote like a dream.
• Finished at 10. After an hour and a half of writing, I’d done 1,500 words for the one scene, and I’m scrapping the pukish scene entirely. Now Friday I can focus on updating my ambush scenes and finishing this sequence!

THURSDAY, APRIL 28th, 2011

Another work day, no writing done. Didn’t have a chance to review my hardcopy pages.

FRIDAY, APRIL 29th, 2011

• Started writing by 9:30
• Took me a little while to figure out what I was doing today. I had two(ish) scenes at the end of the chapter that, essentially, needed to be updated with current plot threads and given a light edit, but I also felt like I needed to weave a specific plot thread in here.
  
• Rewrote the intro into the ambush scene
• Cut two scenes!
  
• Updated the ambush scene and tweaked the end to have higher significance
  
• Wove in the new plot thread
  
• Finished the chapter--and the sequence--and ACT II of Mirrorpass--at 11am.

WOO!

Maybe it's a little early to say the sequence is "finished" per se. The last couple chapters are still a bit raw. I also feel that in this sequence, when I kept a scene from the previous draft, I just skimmed it and haven't really updated it enough; some of the arguments and internal motivations are off. I feel that I need to pull back some to get a better view of the bigger picture, and go over this sequence again looking at those issues.

For the moment, though, I'm moving on. The new sequence goals should be up soon; a lot of this week may be spent in organization, as I am in desperate need of a big picture view of things.

I'll probably come back to this past sequence a few more times in following weeks. In the meantime I get to move on to:

THE CAPTURE SEQUENCE

Otherwise known as the pre-climax/dark moment.This is when I segue from ACT II to ACT III. From reading some of this sequence in hard-copy, I've realized how much work needs to be done (shouldn't have been surprised) but also how much I get to cut. So yay, I'm excited about that. Also, this is first of the last three sequences, and my very last sequence--resolution--won't need much work at all; I rewrote it ages ago, and it's one of the better parts of my story.

The bottom line going forward?

Two sequences left.

Three months until my self-set deadline is up.

Bring it on.


(I hope everyone else recovered from their fails as well as I did?)


Truly and always,
-Creative A