Weekly Writing Check-In: Those Silly Editing Items. And Sex.

When you've been editing your own work for any length of time, you begin to notice certain things that may be unique to your own writing style that you have to batter away with a leaf blower just to have a salvageable draft. I'm not talking about "passive voice", "adverbs", "dialogue tags", or the dozens of little things we're cautioned to watch out for when editing our own or others' works. I'm talking about the writing quirks, the crutches, the things that if anybody caught you repeatedly doing it they would never let you live it down. In my craze this month to edit as much as I can of CROSS//Rebirth to get it off to beta, I've noticed some certain things I've had to CTRL+F for to search and destroy until only one or two remain in a chapter (I usually have long chapters, so one or two is usually find imo.)

- "sigh". All my characters are always sighing, and of course it's usually not necessary. This is a habit I picked up years and years ago as a crutch to display dissatisfaction, eventual fatigue, or as a way to change a character's thoughts or switch POV. I've finally stopped actually writing it so much, but it still abounds in older drafts.

- "realize". This is a new for me in this particular draft. Characters are always having these little epiphanies, apparently. This is trickier to get rid of than "sigh" because it's not a simple delete, but usually requires rearranging entire sentences to get the same idea across without making everyone look like Plato.

- "glance". One of my big things that is pretty much just a style of mine is that I focus on characters' facial expressions, particularly eyes, because this is what I do in real life. Characters' eyes usually convey their inner feelings for me. (And this carries on to others' works...sometimes i don't pick up the inner cues as well unless a character's eyes are described.) But I've been noticing a large amount of "glancing" going on in this draft. Not looking, not glaring, not peering, glancing. Well, it is a pretty word. But I have no need for so much of it. This is a word that's just driving me nuts at this  point because it's EVERYWHERE. Sometimes I just swap out for another word so my "glance" rage doesn't explode, but usually I just drop the whole part or reword it if it's really important.

Aside from that, it's just the usual. First thing I control+F after reading through the whole chapter is "that", because extraneous "that"s are my new kryptonite.

Of course, I type all of this now as I'm staring down the chapter with the super-awkward-heterosexual-generational-difference-sex-scene from hell. (Not because it's awful or doesn't belong, but because it's just so awkward,man, which is good! Because that's what I'm going for.) My brain is going to be caught between "would a reader LAUGH at this description when they're not supposed to" and "oh. oh dude what are you doing with that?! I totally forgot about this!" while I know I'm supposed to be looking for these smaller things. I've read and edited this scene dozens of times now and it's pretty much where it needs to be, but this whole "tightening sentences" doesn't work when you're giggling over the word "tight" hee hee hee!

Sigh. I realize now that I should glance through it.

I'm going in.

Weekly Writing Check-In: Dissected and Disolved

Dead @ "militarily"

Quiet week from me, thanks to yet another six-day day-job work week aaaaand lots and lots of gaming! Teehee~. Oh well, girl's gotta do what she's gotta do to stay out of a nervous breakdown, right?

Of course, there was editing. A lot of editing. Every night editing! But nothing exciting, just the usual editing monotony madness that comes with buckling down and getting stuff done. That said, here are this week's progress reports!

CROSS//Revenge

So I had a real "OH NO I DIDN'T~" moment this week when I was looking over my notes for this first draft on Thursday. There's a really, really important plot/character development point that needs to happen in this novel, and I TOTALLY forgot the set-up in the draft that I have so far and I'm kicking myself over it. See, there's no place to go back and put it without forcing it in/changing everything. I was not happy. Well, I managed to fix it. The original scene was going to take place in Japan (where my characters are en route now) but I figure it could just as easily take place State-side. The scene takes place in a psychiatric hospital, and part of the original drama was going to be in language issues (the character involved doesn't speak Japanese very well) buuuuuut I'm pretty sure America's ~amazing health care system~ can bring just as much drama. Especially back in 2007 in which the story takes place. Of course this means I have to do all new research now. I know a lot of about hospitals in Japan but now it's time to depress myself with stories about American hospitals. Yay! (Either way, I'm problem solving! Go me!)

CROSS//Rebirth

 Editing sucks. Actually, no, I take that back.  I like editing. I just don't like it when it laughs in my face.

Since this is no longer MASSIVE READ THROUGH TIMEZ for clarity, flow, and checking for major holes, I have to get into the real nitty gritty of every chapter, and I didn't skimp on the first one. For now it's "finished" (until later of course, because editing is never really finished, sigh) but it gave me a headache. You see, I have a very specific way I do these detailed edits. Here's the breakdown:

Step 1: Do a careful read through of the whole chapter, changing anything I feel like/needs changing along the way. I get rid of lingering adverbs and passive sentences that stick out to me. The real focus of this, however, is analyzing characterization, especially in these first few chapters. I ended up changing one scene entirely because I did not like how FMC2 came across at all.

Step 2: Run a search and destroy of adverbs, aka ADVERB SLAYER mode. This starts with the obvious "ly" search, and then searching for non-ly adverbs that I know I'm notorious for over-using. A lot of adverbs that survived the first main edit were culled this time. My goal is to not have more than 1-2 "ly" adverbs in prose per chapter. (My chapters are usually 15-30 pages in length, single spaced, so I think this is acceptable. Also, this all only refers to non-dialogue adverbs.)

Step 3: Passive sentences, ugh. This is trickier to search for because not every sentence that holds the key words are passive, and damn you "to be". Word threw a fit at a couple passive sentences that I decided to leave in because they're in dialogue, and sorry Word, that's how they talk. Get over it. This is my least favorite step at all because I just hate searching for passive sentences. Anyone know of a good  program that can do it for me? Heh.

Step 4: Said. Now, this isn't necessarily OMG EVIL KILL THEM ALL search and destroy. This is because I tend to use said as a crutch as I write, when words don't need to be there at all! So I search for "said" and see if it's actually functioning or if a tag is totally unnecessary to begin with. It's usually about half and half.

There's other little sub-steps in there, but those are the four main ones. With the goal of doing one chapter a week (remember how I said some chapters are 30 pages long, single spaced? Yup. A week is good stuff for me!) I usually do Step 1 for three days (it's very careful, close reading) and each other step is one day. That gives me about one break a week if  I decide to take it.

Overall, I deleted about 1000 words this week. Not bad!

Sometimes you reach a point in editing where, you know there are still some passive sentences/adverbs left over that don't need to be there, but you just don't care anymore man. You just can be assed to look for them because yuo're sick of it. Suddenly it's the beta readers'/editor's problem. Yeah. That's the spirit!

It's not my problem at all~

Weekly Writing Check In - Because I need more shit to do.

Yes, I've decided to start making ~weekly writing check ins~, to update the world on the current progress of my projects. If nothing else, it forces me to post every week even if I can't think of any other appropriate topic to discuss.

*ahem* That said, it's actually been a pretty productive month! Let's see, thus far I have to report:

Camp Nanowrimo

It's the end of day 21 here, and CROSS//Process just broke 34k. Not too shabby, I'm right on target. Once I hit 35k things to tend to be all downhill as the end is in plain sight - this time will probably be none too different. However, although I have a basic outline I am working with, I'm still very much pantsing most of the scenes. Example, I am currently in the middle of a scene I know exactly what I want to do with, but after that it's back to pantsing and literally making things up as I go along. It doesn't do well for me in the plot department, but it DOES help me in characterization and that's what I love most...so...that said, goal now is to keep chugging through 'til the 31st and go from there!

CROSS//Rebirth First Round Edit

...is finished! Hooray! I was able to just slash through the last few chapters at the speed I wanted. This first round of editing was focused on recognizing my plot holes and what I need to fix for the Second Round - while also being Adverb Slayer and the righter of all seeable bad grammar. I've made a list in a separate file detailing what I need to fix - first and foremost, I need to add more butterfly symbolism. I only started doing it in the second half of the novel and now want to go back to make sure there's at least one offhand mention of a butterfly SOMEWHERE in every chapter (since my chapters are on average 10k, this is doable.) I also need to introduce the character that appears in the climax in conversations, files, etc so I'm not breaking a huge nasty rule. I was going to do it in this edit but I could not find an appropriate scene to do it in offhand...gotta fix that. Also, other small plot tidbits that I'm sure readers would go "wtf but..." at. If I can see them now, I might as well fix them before somebody else does!

Gonna let the manuscript sit and rest now, though. Not gonna look at it again until September so I can focus on finishing up Camp and glancing through...

CROSS//Revenge First Draft Progress

...nothing to note on this, just announcing to myself that as of this week it's back to the forefront of mind, since it is what I will be working on in November. Gonna give what I have so far a read through to get my brain caught up on what I've done. After Camp I'm going to try drawing up a proper outline for the rest of the novel...gonna be hard, since most of the plot is still fuzzy in my head as to what I want to have happen in this installation.

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That's it for this week. I've actually accomplished quite a bit, eh? As soon as Camp is over I'll be back in my normal game. But damn it's amazing how much you get done when you're not on a million business trips in one month, lol.

I always imagine Camp NaNoWriMo stealing outdated Old Navy commercials for their promotion.

But where do I plug in my laptop.

Although my lack of proper internetz in my apartment for the next month or so have stinted my ability to, you know, blog about writing and stuff, it's done a few wonders for that whole...writing thing.

This is my first official check-in for Camp, and I can safely say that I am right on schedule at 13,010 words (and I haven't written my 1600 for tonight yet). I'm having an interesting time of it, mostly because I'm doing something "new", for me: third-person limited, whereas almost everything else I write is in omniscient because I am God, sit at my feet and let God tell you a tale, damnit. Why are you not sitting down. Johnny, sit down before I smite you. Do you want to be made into a character? Okay, here's a story about a boy named Johnny who couldn't sit down. He died. The end.


AHEM.  As I was saying, third-person limited is something new for me.  I've decided for this prequel to only stay with three main characters, and only two of them will be very prominent for the first part (the other not getting any scenes herself until I introduce her in the second chapter coming up).  I can't really describe why I've decided to write this in limited, other than because it's what the story called for.  And when the story calls for something, who am I to say no?

Otherwise, it's the usual.  Some scenes fly by as I explore how these characters used to be, and other times I sit there going "damnit, they all have the same type of family! Pfft!" but it's the first-first draft who gives a rat's carnival balloon. I have plenty of time later on to go back and decide which character is going to get the better mother. (Damnit, I almost said "Hey so far nobody's an orphan!" and then I remembered FMC's being raised by her maternal aunt cause her parents are dead. Oops.)

Meanwhile I am also still editing the other novel. Because even though it's camp and I like busting out rough drafts, it still technically takes a backseat to my actual novel I plan on publishing first. (The camp novel may be a prequel novel but it's planned to be released between books 3 and 4 of the main series.  The other one will come out between 4 and 5 and is still in the advanced planning stages.)  I managed to edit another chapter today alone and I'm officially past the halfway mark.  I've decided that this revision will mostly focus on plot fixings and easily fixed grammar items such as LOL TOO MANY ADVERBS and awkward sentences.  POV tidying will come with the next through edit. I'm still angsting over where to introduce a character that I came up with halfway through the first draft.  AS it is, she breaks a giant, huge, DO NOT EVER DO writing rule and shows up during the climax without any mentions beforehand. Obviously I must fix this. I need to go back between this edit and the next (edit 2.5? lulz) and drop in conversations about her.  Oh, and I need to put in more butterfly imagery as it's the major symbol of the series and is relevant everywhere. And yet I keep forgetting to do this.  I think the symbolism part is just gonna be an ongoing edit.

Until then, does anybody know of any good cover designers who are, you know, cheap? Free is the best cheap! (Lookin' at you, graphic making friends of mine.) I've given up on designing my own nice cover and would just like somebody else to do it since I completely lack the skill.

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How is your Camp novel coming along?  Are you on track? Or did you fall out of the canoe...because you heard banjos and paddled too fast.