Mandywrimo Update - Waffling, but not for the typical reason.

It's day 14 of Mandywrimo/Nanowrimo, and I am definitely avoiding my story. This is unusual for me. I tend to set challenges for myself, and push like crazy to get them done. Then if I stumble somewhere along the way, I step back and reevaluate--only to set brand new goals, and push like crazy to get those done. I tend to self-evaluate endlessly. So realizing that I've been avoiding this hasn't been an issue for me--it's wondering why I'm avoiding this.

I know I blabbed about my reasons for joining Nanowrimo in my last post, so forgive me, but I need to go over them again.

It's been a long time since I've written on a schedule and made that part of my daily life. I did the 6AM Editing Challenge, but that was a temporary thing. When I was writing Mirrorpass, I did it on the weekends, in these huge releases of creativity. That is not the same as sitting down every day with a requirement to write. Editing every day isn't even the same as writing every day.

It's been a long time, and I know I'm rusty. This is the first time in my college life that I've had a schedule where I could write every day, and keep it up for months, for years.

So that was one reason to take the plunge. This month is supposed to act as my test run. Also, I wanted to see how out of practice I really am. Will I have trouble getting started each day? Or will I struggle with finding inspiration? Will my real problem me coming up with scenes, or will me real problem be nailing the voice? I thought before diving into The Eternity Shift as my new WIP, I should figure out what areas I've gotten weak in.

And finally, I knew it was time to dedicate myself to something new. Mirrorpass still isn't finished (although, yippee, the end is in sight.) But writing a first draft has a driven sense of purpose that editing lacks. I know I need that forward motion. And although I've been writing bits and pieces of ETShift, I had so many possibly storylines in mind that I really needed to sit down with one direction in mind and just hash it out on paper. Nanowrimo sounded like a great way to do that.

Those are my reasons. And at first, everything went really well. Remember that my goal was to write between 800 and 1,000 words each day? Well, just look at my stats for the first week, starting Monday November 1st:

Day 1 -- 1,179
Day 2 -- 1,180
Day 3 -- 1,171
Day 4 -- 1,209
Day 5 -- didn't write
Day 6 -- didn't write

The days I was writing, I was consistently over my goals. I timed myself, too, and each day I spent (almost exactly) and hour and a half to get these words out.

Statistically, I was on fire. It was almost too easy. I had no excuse not to write each day. How pathetic would that be, refusing to write even though I knew I could churn out my wordcount in less than two hours?

By the weekend, I was pretty grumpy. I just didn't want to write. This was very lame and childish of me, which made me more grumpy. So I didn't write Saturday or Sunday. I didn't do homework, and I didn't do chores. I read books and moped and thought about how pathetic I was.

Monday, I took a deep breath and decided to start fresh. And boy, did I make up for things on Monday.

Day 7 -- 2,656

I wrote twice! It was awesome. I felt proud of myself. The next day went well, too:

Day 8 -- 1,641

But then the day after, I had some financial aid issues, and missed my short writing window between classes. That triggered something. It had been an accident, but I realized I didn't mind. It wasn't that I couldn't write, or that I was too lazy to write. It was that I simply wasn't interested enough. I had other important things going on. I had books to read, my apartment to clean, a job interview to prepare for, not to mention a ton of other exciting creative projects to work on.

Writing just wasn't that important at the moment.

Day 9 -- didn't write
Day 10 -- didn't write
Day 11 -- didn't write
Day 12 -- didn't write
Day 13 -- didn't write

Which brings me to now. Day 14. I've had my break and decided I needed to write again, but again, I'm just not that interested. More than that: I'm having my doubts.

Years ago, I realized that occasionally, I go through these periods where I'm not so sure if writing is my future for whatever reason or another. I've learned it's important to not freak out at this point, but to turn the doubt over, to consider it, and allow this to be a possibility. I don't want regrets, you know? I don't want to be so darn determined to be a writer that I block out whatever God is trying to do with me.

Right now, I'm at a bit of a crossroads. I have a novel that could go on submission if I ever finish editing it. I've worked in web design, and now I'm trying to get a job as a videographer. I have so many creative paths to choose from, so many things I want to do, and I'm realizing I might not be able to have them all--they compliment each other marvelously, but one is always a little more interesting than the others.

Now, if I'd been writing steadily, if I had the discipline of writing daily from the past few years, I bet this wouldn't be a problem right now. I know some of this is just because I've been out of it for so long. Part of what I'm realizing, though, is how out of it I truly am. And part of it is the apathy of ETShift--this novel doesn't have the "it factor" that hooks me on a story, and until I find it, I know it will be a struggle to write, anyway.

Lack of it factor + out of practice + wondering if I should focus on this now, anyway = the ultimate question: Am I really dedicated to writing at this point in my life?

Day 14 – open to the possibilities

This is a no-judge zone, so feel free to comment with how your Nanowrimo (or PerWriMo/Personal Writing Month – thanks Ryan!) goals are going. Are you flagging as we head into week three? Did you get back your wind after the awfulness of week two? Or like me, have you discovered a whole different kind of problem in your way?


Truly and always,

-Creative A

Filter Words? Since When?

Let me take you back to the days when you were a new writer. Remember the first time someone told you that ly-adverbs were unacceptable? It was like being blindsided. First, came the confusion. How could ly-adverbs be bad? Your dialogue would fall flat without "laughingly," "softly," and "excitedly." Then came the denial. This critiquer didn't know what they were talking about. Your writing was fine, just fine.

Then came the nagging doubt. The internet research. The realization that, oh, ly-adverbs are bloodsucking prose-leeches that should be eradicated without mercy.

Remember?

I feel like that again today. One moment, I was skimming my way through Write About Now and Solvang Sherrie threw out the phrase "filter words," which struck me as unusual, so I Googled it.

The next moment, I'd discovered a whole new realm of pain.

See, filter words are bad. They're sneaky. They feel like including POV but in fact, they distance readers from the story. And I'm pretty sure that I'm guilty.

Susan Dennard at Let The Words Flow said,

Filters are words or phrases you tack onto the start of sentence that show the world as it is filtered through the main character’s eyes.

(with filter phrase) I see the moon rise overhead.

(without filter phrase) The moon rises overhead.

She has a ton of other great examples, including this list of filter words to watch out for:

Here’s a list of filter words for you to watch out for:

• to see
• to hear
• to think
• to touch
• to wonder
• to realize
• to watch
• to look
• to seem
• to feel (or feel like)
• can
• to decide
• to sound (or sound like)

You can read her full post here.

I've spent the last few days going through a fresh draft of Mirrorpass doing a continuity read+line edit, and one thing I started writing down were phrases or words I overused. So far on my list I have the overuse of "and" in descriptive passages. The use of "all at once." The use of "slowly" at the beginning of sentences. Now, I'm having nightmares of what my list would look like if I went through searching for filter words--eep!

My writer friends, this is the moment to take a deep breath.

To realize we're professionals and that we can handle this. We got over ly-adverbs and passive phrasing, after all. We can do this.

What I'm left with now is, A: Why haven't I ever heard of these before? And B: How bad of a problem is it? Is this an advanced fiction thing, that you learn about as you mature; is it a Writing 101 principle that I've missed this whole time?

My thought is it's an advanced fiction thing. Also, taking a closer look, "filter words" seem like a mix between passive writing, and telling versus showing. Removing the filter phrase brings us from the passive POV to an active description. We're not being told that the POV sees, or feels, or decides; we're shown the POV seeing, feeling, deciding.

This gives me a little hope. Maybe this is just a new term for the evil I've always known existed. Maybe, like a virus that has evolved around the vaccines in place, this form of passive telling is just another weakness that writers can subconsciously develop. If so, fixing it just means doing what I've always done--look for signal phrases. Cut ruthlessly. Learn to write with active prose. Learn to identify when filter words should stay, instead of go.

Here are two more helpful posts on the topic:

Are These Filter Words Weakening Your Fiction?

Why Editors Reject Manuscripts -- they actually talk about this under "passive voice," and within that section they call it "a filter."

So yes. I've been blindsided. Now that I've discovered the big secret of the universe, I want you guys to 'fess up. Did you know about filter words? Why didn't you tell me? What do you think about them, now that I've been so gracious as to ruin the day by informing you?

Truly and always,

-Creative A

6-AM Editing Challenge -- Sunday, Week 1

BACKSTORY

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.

WHAT I'VE BEEN WORKING ON

At the start of this challenge, I have been working on the turning point sequence, which covers chapters 14-19 of MIRRORPASS and propels us down the road to the climax. So far within the sequence, I'm up to chapter 17.

And now begin the challenge!

SUNDAY, MARCH 17, 2011

Since today is a Sunday, the first day of the challenge, and the next edits require some brainstorming, today is a planning day. I need to work on any of these three things:

• Major edits to chapter 10, in preparation for an unexpected beta opportunity. My last beta told me the chapter gets too long and looses it's focus and believability after a certain point. I need to figure out how to cut and smooth out the sequence so it flows better, regains believability, and fixes the main problems my beta pointed out.

• Rewrite and revise chapter 17. This is a "non-pov" chapter, so to speak, and it jumps out of the timeline of the story to set us up for later chapters. The problem is, it has a scene with repetitive plot threads that I need to cut and move to chapter 18, so I want to tackle 18 first.

• Tackle chapter 18. (Did you catch that humor?) I did some major plot readjustments earlier in this sequence, but this chapter is actually where the adjustments start effecting the chapters around it.
  I need to take three scenes from chapters 15, 16, and 19, and merge the important plot threads in one totally brand new scene at the beginning of chapter 18. Then the second scene needs heavy revisions and merging with a scene from chapter 17. Finally, for the last scene of the chapter, I'm again merging it with a scene from chapter 19.
  And I may need to write a lot of fresh material to tie all this together. So there's a lot of organization I need to do, here, before I even begin writing.

Let's see how I do!

RISING TIME -- 6:30

That's acceptable, since I need some time to get used to the early morning, and a honestly a better start than I hoped. Being that it's Sunday I planned on spending most of the morning on non-writing, Christian-related goals and getting to work by noon. (This was one of my big goals in the original post about the challenge.)

FAST FORWARD TO WHEN I STARTED WRITING --

Spent time blogging and getting organized for writing.

Printed out all of chapter 10 and posted around room. Realized I need to look at my other beta's comments on this chapter and identify what I really think needs to be cut/revised.

Scanned my sequence board to familiarize myself with the scenes in chapter 17 and 18. Modified my goals for the beginning of chapter 18 based on the fact that I'm not really sure which scenes I'm supposed to be merging (one of my Stickys got lost!)

Turned on MIRRORPASS playlist. Motivation time.

Printed out the scenes I definitely knew were going to be merged into chapter 18.

Thought really hard about what had been on that lost Sticky note.

Got discouraged that I'd made so little progress, even though this was just a planning day anyway.

Thought a bit harder and poked through my numerous MIRRORPASS files and folders.

Aha! Remembered what was on the Sticky-note!

Quickly wrote some notes to self so I wouldn't forget again. Things connected. Went through printouts highlighting and making notes, then abruptly had an idea of how to fix chapter 10 and went kamikaze on it, using black sharpie to censor out sections to cut, and red pen to tell how I'll connect the pieces after the cut. Then I just went on and edited the whole hardcopy. I got a ton of work done within the space of an hour.

After that I paused to regroup and print out remaining scenes needed for the chapter 18 merge. Read a few writing craft blog posts (this helps keep me stimulated while calming me down after a frenzy of cutting, so I can come back with some focus.)

Got distracted by some blog posts. Then life happened and I had to leave the writing zone for a while.

Finally came back, went over my crazy scattering of pages and notes, and realized that although it was late, I had everything I needed to edit chapter 10, and everything except a printout of one scene that I needed to edit chapter 18.

AT THE END OF THE DAY --

I'd say I had mild success on my first day. I got interrupted twice by life, and twice it really killed my progress. On the other hand, I can jump right in and edit chapter 10 now, and I'm almost ready to revise chapter 18. There's still an issue about starting the edits for this chapter that I can't quite put my finger on.

I think in the middle of all this merging chaos, I've been overlooking a plot thread that's still essential to the scene. And maybe a feasibility issue? Knowing myself, this is something I need to brainstorm on when I have the scene open in front of me. So I think my goal for tomorrow is to begin writing the first scene of chapter 18.

GOALS MET/UNMET --

Worked on two out of my possible three writing needs

Completed one of out the three

Half-finished one out of the three

Definitely prepared to start writing tomorrow on chapter 10, though I'm unsure if I did enough prep for 18.

Didn't quite manage my time well enough to get everything else accomplished.

Didn't get to bed until 11:20 -- not good, need to move that up to 10, or I won't make it up by 6.

So all in all, for a first day, I think this went well! It's clear that I need to get the actual schedule down, however, to make the progress I want. So those are new goals for tomorrow.

Truly and always,

-Creative A

The Writing Cave

Us bloggers are super aware of our blogger positions, I think. Countless times I've read other people's apologetic posts on how they haven't been blogging for a while and how they're really sorry because they had all these plans but real life got in the way...and I read thinking, I can empathize, but I hadn't even noticed. Not until they apologized anyway.

Another super-sensitive habit of bloggers is that we sit here and think of what all our readers must be thinking. (I promised them a post on my goals. They must be wondering what's taking me so long! I'll do the post on adverbs instead. Oh geez, look at that timestamp. Now everyone will know I was lazy and did this at midnight in my pajamas. With food in my teeth. Because I got the munchies after dinner.)

Honestly? We have no idea you did that. Sounds like fun. Why didn't you invite us to join the party?

Being that I am a blogger and also very self-conscious, I know that I haven't done a New Year's post (like I planned) or any of the other five posts that I've been dying to put up. I'm also aware this has been a slow blogging year for me.

But for once, I have a good excuse as to why I haven't been blogging.

I was outlining these chapters:

This is Chpts 14-19 of MIRRORPASS.

It's the biggest problem section of my novel left to tackle.

Each colored sticky is a scene in the chapter, with brief explanations of the events. Blue notes are the main POV, orange for any other POV. I put gold stars next to the good stuff. (I don't know if you can see, but there aren't a lot of gold stars.) But that's okay, because in the white notes, I detailed everything wrong with the chapter.

The white notes all said basically the same thing: I don't have a good grip on a certain character or the motivations involved, so these chapters are all repetitive as I try to hash out why people are acting certain ways.

Now I'm brainstorming on the character and motivations before rewrites.

I was also cutting up this:

It's is my rewritten version of Chpt 11, MIRRORPASS. The middle scene is one long dialogue about 2k in length. I needed to figure out why it was all over the place. So I identified the topics discussed, highlighted them with a unique color, and then cut it up, putting all the colors in the same pile.

(This is a technique mentioned in Monica Wood's "The Pocket Muse.")

And then I organized it like this:

I tried to keep the colors together (and thus the topics discussed) which didn't work so well. At least until I started pulling out pieces that didn't fit. And writing transitions.

I also allowed myself to 'wrap' one topic in another, using one topic to frame the other. Conclusion? Dialogue and transitions are very interesting. I rearranged a lot.

But finally I got it done.

...the hardcopy version, at least.

In sum, I have been writing. Like a madwoman. Like a dark creature that emerges from it's hole only for coffee, frozen pizza, and Star Trek reruns at 11:30 each night. My family jokes about me going back to my cave where I'll disappear for hours on end.

So, dear world, I am truly and deeply sorry I haven't been blogging. With hyper-awareness I apologize for not posting the New Years Resolution post that you probably didn't notice was missing from my corner of the blogosphere. I also apologize for not putting up the final addition to my "So You're a Writer, Do You Need a Website?" series. It will go up. It will. Even if I have to post it while I'm in my jammies.

And don't worry. I'm totally neglecting my real-life responsibilities as much as my blogging ones.

Back to the writing cave,

-Creative A

Working Around the Wordcount Ultimatum

*In honor of nearing my last final and the end of a semester, I thought I'd take a break and post something I wrote recently. I'm hoping that during this break I can put up a lot more stuff over the semester, including Part 3 of "So You're a Writer, Do You Need a Website?"

Of late, I've been staring at my novel MIRRORPASS with a rather critical eye. (Summary at the bottom of this post.) If you've ever seen the animated movie CHICKEN RUN then think of that scene near the beginning, where all the chickens line up for role call, and the evil lady goes down the line checking to see who's laid any eggs. And she sees that this one hen hasn't laid any eggs for a while. And the other hens are like, "oh no!" Because the evil lady takes the hen...and, well...next thing you know, she's having chicken pie.

This is me. I have become the evil chicken lady.

If you've been following my editing progress, then you know I've had one main goal for the past six or so months: to cut. My lovely, lovely baby finished herself off at a plump 97k, which I did not expect and now have to deal with. So I came up with a plan.

Most of the beginning of the novel I wrote by the seat of my pants, and I struggled getting many elements of the story pulled together. I figured it would be easy enough to rewrite the first nine chapters or so, streamlining that whole messy process, and eliminate anywhere between 4k and 7k words.

After that, I would be within the healthy range of mid 80k to breaking-90k, perfect for a Young Adult with large SciFi elements. The other 2-3k could come from regular line edits.

I've run into one small problem. My plan? It's not working.

I always have been, and always will be, a rewriter: I perfect as I go along, and my writing quality can jump two or three notches in a single rewrite. Plus, I flesh things out in these drafts. I find new ways to weave in backstory or emotion or character growth.

It works great--except when I'm cutting. For every bad, unpolished word I have cut, I have replaced it with a solid, shining one. After all my work, I've eliminated a mere 2k from the first eight chapters.

Don't get me wrong. I've gotten great beta responses on those edits. But this was my big chance to slim things down. I don't have too many more large problem areas in the novel that I can hope to cut large chunks out of during rewrites. And you don't just eliminate 9-5k.

My friends, we have resorted to Plan B.

Plan B means keeping a sharpshooter's eye out for small characters, small subplots, scenes with too much exposition, or scenes that derailed us from the main plot for a beat too long. It means marking such scenes with a big mental flag.

In particular, I've been looking at my many of the subplots for my minor characters. One character we see just twice in the entire novel. He doesn't even have a name. But what I like about him is that he gives us a hint at the overreaching implications of the inciting incident. The things that happen in the story will happen whether or not we hear it from his viewpoint. At the same time, small pieces of the climax will make more sense, and will have a lot more emotional depth, if his scenes remain in the story. And all my readers really love him.

Cut, don't cut? He definitely gets the red flag.

I've had similar problems with other minor characters. Many of the minor-role antagonists in my novel get short clips of face time. A few of them end up helping my MC (Aria) In small ways, others remain antagonists to the end, but we get a much more human picture of their struggle to remain antagonists--or not. Some of their actions that are necessary for the plot just wouldn't make sense unless you have those scenes. And again, readers have loved these guys.

On the other hand, I have secondary characters who readers haven't responded to at all, but cutting them would leave huge gaps in the story. Their presence allowed me to make the story rise above small themes and take them cosmic, going beyond Aria and her personal goals. I love this aspect of the story. My execution is the problem.

As I go along and keep revising, I'm going to continue evaluating these scenes, characters, and subplots to see if they make sense anymore. If they make sense, if they feel necessary, I'll keep them. If they've become a nice idea that isn't as essential as they once were, well...maybe I'll have some chicken pie.

What all this has got me thinking about, is discerning the value of your words. There are wordcount standards in the literary world. YA fiction has it's own subcategories; summer romances and quick action reads can be around the 45-65k mark, while YA fantasies can be as high as 90k. I've always shot for the standard 70-80k wordmark. It's the wordcount ultimatum: be this length, or else.

However, in the YA world, I have noticed these standards growing more flexible. I'm not just talking about the Twilight's and Harry Potter's among us. I'm talking about Graceling, *Before I Fall, and Beautiful Creatures. I'm sure I'm missing tons of others. These books stretch the standards, but the words feel valuable. I can just imagine if someone told Kristin Cashore that she needed to loose 15k and cut the forest sequence in Graceling, or Katsa's trip across the mountains. No way. They weren't just words, they were an essential part of the story.

In the fitness world they are coming to the realization that you don't always need to loose weight--it's far better to tone. Building muscles burn fat, but muscles weigh more than fat does. So two people can have the same weight in pounds, where one is fit and the other isn't.

The thing that I'm trying to get at, here, this overarching realization that I've come to, is even though I need to be critical and put my novel to the test, I'm going to keep the parts that need keeping, wordcount regardless. Wouldn't a fit, toned 90k novel be a whole lot better than a skinny 80k one with the ribs showing?

How have you guys handled the wordcount ultimatum? What books do you feel did--or didn't--handle the length thing? I'd love to see some more examples of this.

From the editing trenches,

-Creative A

*One teeny tiny caveat here. I read Before I Fall, and I didn't personally enjoy it as much as most of my friends did. Lauren Oliver is a great writer and it showed in Before I Fall--her characterization and description is amazing--but the thing exhausted me. I would have personally enjoyed it more if it had been a little more concise. But even if it had been shorter, it would still be a great example of a long wordcount with essential plot, so I kept it in the list.

Editing emotions to death

Surprise! I have a post for you all.

First off, after my rather declarative but vague previous post about how I wasn't currently writing and was a-okay with that, I decided no, I wasn't really a-okay. I've been taking this summer as it comes because I don't have anything in particular to occupy myself with. I had been applying for jobs and keeping my plate cleared "in case." However, I realized that wasn't an excuse to sit around doing nothing. I had some projects that I'd saved for the summer--and editing MIRRORPASS was definitely one of them.

So I started fresh, printed out a nice thick hardcopy of all the chapters that had been edited already, and spent a couple days getting back into the voice of my story. I ended up doing a lot of polishing in there and even rewrote a large chunk of one chapter that's been well written but out of date for a while.

Then I hit the current chapters-in-progress. The ones I've been working on, for yeah, a few months now. The ones I hated writing originally and hate even more now because for the life of me, I cannot seem to balance the unique mix of elements the story requires right then. Not only am I unsure how to fit all the necessary plot into those two short chapters, I also can't seem to write with any emotion at all.

And that's what I wanted to talk about. Keeping the drama and emotions rich in your story while editing. I know that many times in the past, I've started out with intense adrenaline-filled stories that, although rough and dramatic, ring with a kind of emotional fervor that makes me inspired to write them. I push my first drafts to the max. In edits I try to mature this emotion--keep the raw, real quality, and loose the overwrought bits that are a little too cheesy or angsty or unrealistic.

It's difficult because as the story matures and changes, the emotions my characters face have to change. I have to clean away some of that raw intensity and start over. Except I'm not just pushing it to the max; I'm trying to mature it, make the descriptions simultaneously more sophisticated and more intense.

Usually this means cutting. Cutting the adverbs that end in "ly," the run-on sentences that were a cheap gimmick to build breathlessness, the dialogue tags. It means my MC can't scream every line and she can't use so many exclamation points. Such things get cut.

In my quest for maturity--and maybe you've experienced this too--I find that I tend to edit out the emotion altogether. The more drafts I go through, the less intensity the pages have. It becomes harder and harder to remember what I wanted my MC to feel the first time around, or exactly what emotion I was trying to capture. As I become weary of the editing process, my prose becomes weary of itself. Scenes that require the most technical attention suffer the worst. Story sequences that need multiple heavy revisions tend to suffer as well.

Time and time again I've tried to re-inspire myself and plow through these chapters. I go back, re-read, find the emotion, and dive back in--only to find myself writing sawdust prose moments later. And this bothers me. I've come to learn the strengths and weaknesses of my writing, and I know the way I write emotion is a big part of what makes my style unique. Without it, I fall a bit flat. I don't really want to write something that won't get the blood pumping or have people edging off their seat. Yet in edits, this is what happens.

It's discouraging. Maybe, it's also one of those things we writers simply have to go through. And maybe there is some hope after all. I know that I've heard some incredible stories of authors who went through sixteen, twenty drafts between their first go at the story and the time it hit bookshelves.

So tell me, all of you writers faithfully plugging away at your third or seventh or twelfth draft. How do you do it? How do you keep the emotions real? Do you ever find yourself editing something to death?

Suggestions, observations, and magical solutions are welcome. Or you could just crack the whip on me. That works too.

-Creative A

Beginning Mirrorpass Edits

First off, a bit of a landmark: MIRRORPASS has been a complete first draft for two whole months now. Which is kind of awesome to me. The first whole month, I was in one of those post-ending modes where you feel crummy about yourself for no reason at all, and your novel haunts you, and so you feel all cranky and conflicted because suddenly, there's nothing left to do, but it won't leave you alone anyway.

At least in retrospect, that's what I thought was happening. So nobody yell at me. I broke one of those cardinal writing rules and began editing after three weeks. (After this post, actually.)

I'm not going to lie. Mostly, I just wanted to print MIRRORPASS out in entirety. This is like a kind of sin at my house--we recycle paper, people. Imagine using up an entire ink cartridge, and an entire package of paper, on one print job! My dad went pale on that one.

But yeah, it worked out okay, because I found I wasn't ready to go all kamikaze on poor MIRRORPASS. All I wanted was a checkup. Pre-edits, if you will. I'm big on keeping things all in my head. The pre-editing stage, for me, is about getting it all out on paper; finding those anomalies, continuity areas, and alternates that I've kept sticky-noted in my brain during the entire first draft.

I'm not going to lie. I had fun. I had highlighters, and two colors of pens; I stapled each chapter together and kept them in a binder; I had three notebooks, one for changes I made and changes I needed to make, one for syntax and SF wording, and one for timelines, backstory, character traits, stuff like that. Not to mention the files on my computer.

Each comment came with a page, chapter, and scene number. Red pen with stars was for issues I needed to address in the future. Black pen was for inline edits and changes I had already made. At night, I would scribble notes on a whiteboard by my bed, and transcribe them in the morning.

Oh yes. Fear my organization.

I did hit a bit of a wall after reading through the whole first draft. Although I can be uber organized, I can also have irrational fears sometimes. I was just a weensy bit scared of revising. The daily writing pains of my first draft were still quite fresh, and the thought of writing anything new was exhausting.

So now it's been another month...and guess what...I'm ready for edits again!

Here's my mini revelation. I like edits. When I'm in edits, I feel like a real writer. Maybe it has something to do with specific goals and timelines, or maybe it's the comforting notion of being able to use sticky notes, red pens, pads of lined paper. These are all things I can't do during my first draft. My first draft happens in a state of mental isolation. It all has to be held in and managed and not overthunk, for fear of psyching myself out, and wasting precious time. It doesn't feel real to me. I literally have to emerge afterward.

But in the edits? In these wonderful edits, I get to play. I don't have to let the crap stand, I can roll up my sleeves and clean it out! There's a kind of security, knowing what a scene needs to accomplish and what place it fits in exactly. I love that feeling.

Not to say that it's all cupcakes and bubblegum. Second drafts are my favorite, yes, but it always goes downhill from there. At some point I'll be moaning and groaning because, for crying out loud, will this ending ever work right? I'll even hate the good things about my novel. Why did I have to make it flow so smoothly? I can't figure out where to start cutting! Why did this character need such a compelling backstory? He takes up too much room.

I will feel that way, trust me.

But for now I'm having fun.

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What I've done so far:

• Got rid of a slow sequence near the climax, that also had some odd issues I would need to fix anyway. This cut my wordcount from 97k to 94k.
• Rewrote a scene I accidentally lost ages ago, that has intimidated me ever since. + 2k.
• Rewrote half of the last chapter, which I hated, because it was all resolution and I couldn't get it right.
• Have brainstormed how to revise the beginning--lots of alternates to choose from.
• Have brainstormed a new, possibly stake-raising way for my MC to have a particular revelation. If I implement my new idea, it could really add some explosive power to my climax, and also smooth my resolution chapter.

Current goals:

• Continue cutting wordcount. Aim for 90-85k
• Revise beginning, and revise the transition from beginning to middle.
• Finish revising the last chapter and resolution area.
• Act upon some beta-reader suggestions, one way or another

Where are you guys in your edits? And hey, don't forget to check out The Line and Before I Fall ARC contests! There's only three more days for Before I Fall, and five for The Line.

Truly and always,

Creative A