Rewriting, Editing, Leaving it new and fresh???

I am still in the first rewrite after independent editor review and corrections/suggestions. It is actually umpteen rewrites, truth be told.

I have read sites that suggest sending your manuscript out after the first write. I know I would scare agents off with my comma fest. It seemed like a dumb idea at the time, but the more I rewrite, the more I feel I should go back to the first draft.

The first draft was full of life and exciting. I have to wonder if I am losing my voice in all these rewrites, or is it just that I am losing my excitement?

Anyone experience anything similar? What are your thoughts on this?

Where's the time?

Eons ago, you could write a book, print it out, send it off in a book box and get a rejection or, if it appealed to someone, find an agent or editor. 

No longer so!

Now, you need an "Author Platform;" A presence on the web, really on the world, that says you are somehow connected, not just five ways to Kevin Bacon, but to half a million people you have never met in person. These are people who like to read your written word.

I do understand. It's a built in audience for your book. What I do not understand is how you have the trim to write a book, when you need to build a website, blog, tweet, LinkedIn, and be entertaining on Facebook, which I find to be quite a depressing site whose main function is to point out to me, "Am I REALLY related to these people?" I am already convinced that I did not go to school with half the people who say they were in my class. My memory cannot be that bad.

So, my apologies for being missing from my site for so long. I have been running another edit to cut wordcount. It has either tightened my work up or killed it dead. I have long ago decided I am not the person to judge my own work, so, in the near future I am thinking about putting up two clips. 1. from when I started the book, and 2. after twenty-five edits. We shall see, because right now I am focusing on my Author Platform.

I found a nice article on The Creative Penn. There is a ton of information on building your platform and what it is and isn't. One is A Definition of Author Platform by Jane Friedman.

Now, I know that I need "visibility, Authority, and reach." I think I also need about twelve more hours in a day. Guess I shall give up my afternoon nap. I cannot give up housecleaning as I gave that up long ago.

My Writing Process

My writing methods are not complicated. It is not in my makeup to do extensive outlines and have it all plotted out ahead of time. Sometimes, I wish I could work that way, but I simply sit down and write the story in my head. I start at the beginning and end at the end.

Then, I go back and fix it. While I am fixing it, I fuss and grumble and tell myself I am going to buckle down and learn to plot things out ahead of time. Then, I wake up in the middle of the night and the beginning of the next story is rumbling around in my brain and I am off again on the next adventure.

I do massive editing. For the first four or five chapters, I will start each morning at the beginning and, edit as I read. Then, I will continue my story. When that begins to take too long, I start at the last chapter or two I have written. This gets me in the book's world and reminds me of what I need to do next. By the time I am at the end of the book, I would imagine the first chapter has been edited a hundred times. I work seven days a week, unless life intrudes. Sometimes for ten hours, sometimes for two.

I do eventually get around to organizing my plot. I found some great plotting help online at http://ticket2write.tripod.com/mysplot.html.

I found this when I was writing a Mystery and having a problem with plotting, but I find it works well for this Middle Grade Story also.  The Link is The Classic 12-Chapter Mystery Formula I am currently working on the plot for book two, as I am also writing it, from the start of my story.

More than anything, I love the adventure of writing. I love waking up in the middle of the night, with a great idea, and I love waking up in the morning, not knowing where the next adventure is heading. I love doing research and finding a new character, object or landmark, I just have to add to the book. I even loved the day I realized a character, that I was very fond of, would have to die and I sat there writing his life, with tears in my eyes.

You really MUST read it aloud

As many times as I thought I had just one more edit, I do believe, this last edit was the last edit. It was the "read it aloud" edit and I am here to tell you that it is the one edit you must not skip. Nothing compares to you reading it outloud. You cannot do it while reading it to another person either. Do it alone. You will find all kinds of things, like places where the word "began" is better than the word "started", or where you should have a comma where a period should be or vice versa.

Husband was gone for three days picking up oldest son, Gaffer, from Duluth, Minnesota, where he was stranded after a three month futile job search. The second boy, EMT, was working each day and the youngest, JRock, was in school, so I took those three days to read my book. It was highly productive.

I had recently printed it out and had husband and EMT do their read throughs, marking comments. Now, it is Gaffer's and daughter's turn. I will take all the help I can get.

So, after having a month of power outages, a tornado and a large limb on my roof, and a computer melt-down, I am off to work on all those pesky things I need to submit. First up, is my log line and, while I have written about that before, I have found some new help, think I have a good one written and will write about that next post; providing I have power. It went on and off twice so far this morning.

Critiquing the manuscript

The rain has stopped in Indiana, if only for a day and a half, and the sun has dried the ground enough that the phone lines are fairly good. Although, I have been kicked off twice in trying to post this and this morning, I had a party line. Thank you sooooo much AT&T, for this service.

I printed my complete manuscript and started passing it around. The first person who read it (son, age 20) marked corrections/concerns and returned it to me. I just corrected a few pages, reprinted those and passed it on to person #2 (husband, 47 going on 80).

No, I am not being mean, the poor man has had COPD for twenty years and is often seated with my mother, in restaurants, instead of with me. He is one of those people who you do not want to watch certain movies with as he will sit there and pick out something he feels is not logical and drive you nuts talking about it. Hence, he is good to have edit. Mostly, his contribution was to extend the final scene and it is now greatly improved and two chapters instead of one, and also reprinted.

Actually, my Master’s Daughter is the second editor, but is very busy and has not gotten all of it back to me. My very first editor was one of her sixth grade students. A wiz kid, with an attitude, who I found adorable. He’s ultra smart. I am trying to have as many people as possible read it and critique as you get a different ideas and comments from all ages and people.

I am now reading the book on the computer, to make a final list of all the foreshadowing for the future books in the series and also reading it off of paper to younger son, and am amazed that I can still find things like extra punctuation marks, etc. Does this never end? I am anxious for oldest son to get home at the end of August, with his fiancé, and have them read it. Hopefully, by then, I will have all the related documents ready to go, my website up and can get on with submitting.

Life goes on and so does editing

As much as I would like to hibernate in a room and just write, life keeps on moving around me and requiring my attention. So, this week, I took the dog to the vet for some unexpected surgery and then was up all night with her, was at the ER till 1:00am with my EMT boy the next day (he keeps passing out), and the next day I took my mom to the ER for her Congestive Heart Failure. It's like a central Indiana ER tour, without sleep.

My body is still trying to recharge, so I spent the day surfing, the internet, not the waves. There are not a lot of waves in Indiana, and I found an interesting blog at BookEnds, LLC — A Literary Agency: How Long to Query.

BookEnds, and I hope they will forgive me for quoting, but BookEnds states: "Hands down one of the biggest mistakes I see authors making is spending all their time and energy revising, rewriting and reworking that first book. I know from experience that over time you can do more damage than good with all of that revising."

This is something I have wondered about as far as the book I am writing. I am actually working on my third book, none published though, so I tend to worry about everything a bit. But, I found one way to resolve that issue.

Never, ever, ever throw out or delete anything. I have printed this book out twice in full and I have CD backups for over three years now. I back up a minimum of once a month, and I do a flashdrive backup every night. And, I will say, that any time I thought to myself that I was not improving the book, I have been able to go back and so far the improvements have been improvements. That said, I will add that for my picture book, I still favor my original version and am very glad I kept a copy of it.

I did, however, reach a point with this book where I felt I had gone as far as I could and that is when I called in my Super-Hero .....Master's Daughter, to the rescue. Originally, it was for grammar and punctuation but it turned into so much more.

Master's Daughter is a sixth grade teacher, a writer, a worker with electron microscopes and now for her summer will be working with an Atomic Force Microscope. Her heros are Einstein and Yoda. She is bright and funny, knows today's kids, and we work so well together.

My book has been a family project: inspired by grandsons/sons, ideas from them and husband and now a massive tweaking with daughter. Her ideas have really added that touch I was searching for. And, no matter how much I wanted to get it out to agents and editors by June, the extra months will be worth it.

So, the lesson is, always keep backups at every step and try to stay out of the ER.

My Long Absence

Wow! This has to be the longest time between posts yet. But, trust me, my reader. It will all soon be worth it. I am so close to the place where I can begin submitting my novel to agents.

That is very exciting to me. Everything clicked and my Advanced Middle Grade Fantasy Novel (could that get any longer?) is down to the "wrap up" chapter. One day, the big scene just fell in place.

Actually, I reached that point in my millionth edit and just kept going this time. Master's Daughter and I are up to chapter seven in our joint edit.It is amazing to me, that she picks up on the exact same spots where I have thought, "This isn't right. This isn't necessary. The wording is off." Thus, showing me that I need to trust my instincts more and that everyone needs a partner editor.

The edit is picking up words mostly, or where a scene is confusing. It is nice to have a second pair of eyes, or should I say, a second brain, to help me find the right word.In the evening, when my brain is a bit tired, I do a few more things on my web site.

The website is coming along well. I have my graphics ready and I am working on my text only pages, knowing that the wording for those, will go into the graphic version, so I am killing two birds with one stone.I have worked out how much I can say without giving too much away and making the web site interesting enough to get people to return.

I look forward to the day when I can post a request here for help in critiquing it. Nothing really humorous to write, just that Master's Daughter found my pile of leaves confusing. And, if you want to know what I'm talking about, you'll have to read the book.

Read everything you can.

Please excuse my absence; I am deep into editing the last half of my novel. Since I tend to write by reading from the beginning, even though I am writing the third, fourth, fifth chapter, the first half of my novel is well edited. At some point that becomes difficult though and I am now editing the 'less gone over' part of my book, so my writing here is more sporadic.

I am a reader. Set it in front of me and I will read it. But, when I began writing my youth fantasy novel, I was afraid to read any more fantasies, as I was afraid I would inadvertently steal from someone. Do not be afraid of that. It’s like they say, there is nothing new.

This Christmas, Gaffer gave me two Terry Pratchett books to read and I was hooked. Low and behold, the third one I picked up had a small section of something that is similar to a very important object in my work and that is when I decided that you do not need to worry about stealing from an author, when you are writing. What you need to do is learn from them.

I would be working on a sculpture, something new and dynamic no one has ever done before (I thought) and the very next issue of one of my Ceramic/Clay magazines would arrive, and there would be something very similar to what I was creating. In other words, everything has been done. You just have to find a way to do it in a unique way.

The art adage is “steal it, don’t borrow it.” This means to take an idea and do it in your own unique way. And, I think it is finally dawning on me that the more you read, even as you write, the more other authors will influence your writing in a good way.

With Pratchett, it’s the way he turns a phrase and the things he relates to other items that I would never think to do and yet it’s just brilliant. He is a master at the Simile and Metaphor.

With Rowling, it is the way she draws you into her world immediately and how you identify with her characters. I can get so lost in her books that I barely know what is going on around me.

So, read everything you can get your hands on, but only after your writing hours because that has to come first.

Chapter four editing.

First, how do you like my new color? I am not a “pink” person. My whole closet is black, white and grey with just touches of bright colors. I would love to paint some golden yellow walls and maybe a red wall in an office, but I am not a pink person at all. However, I thought this looked restive. It must be the bubble gum affect.

Do you remember the bubble gum study? Years ago, they painted the jail holding cells bubble gum pink. There was a study that found out it was a calming color. Years later they found out it was not a valid study; or said that. We had done the parlor games where you have someone hold an arm out and try their best not to let you pull it down. Then, you hold up a bubble gum color paper (construction paper works), and they stare at it for a minute and then you tell them not to let you pull down their arm. You reach up and with little effort at all, you just pull their arm down.

So, stay mellow, and now for information on my ongoing edit.

I have been in a funk lately. Why? Who knows? Maybe I need to stare at Bubble Gum pink. But, I have tried to find something to say to all of you, and nothing sounded worth it. All it takes to get me going again is to receive a new Chapter back from Master’s Daughter with editing remarks.

I am just starting to go over the edit; but I will share some of what I have learned, so far.

I am finishing up on the first book in a proposed five book series. We are only up to Chapter four on our final edit, and I felt that I was perhaps telling too much in this chapter. It is a transition, from the world they lived in to the fantasy world they are traveling to. I was covering government and money, plus foreshadowing a future battle scene.

So, my editor’s general comments are that:

1. Do not remove the government section. My imagery is interesting and she feels it is helpful to understand about the “similarities and differences in the organization" of the magical world and our world.

2. The foreshadowing, of a future battle scene, definitely works.

3. Discussion of money: She feels kids would enjoy it and, being the first book in the series, it is a needed explanation of the basics.

4. What would be an exclamation word, that kids would use that would not date the book but be timely? The word “Awesome”was suggest by JRock and is agreed on by Master's Daughter; unless, she states, "I am going to use text messaging lingo." Trust me, I am NOT going there.

5. And, she does not like the straw man and, frankly, neither do I. It was one of those things that sounded funny when I wrote it and just stayed there. He has no purpose; he is not coming back into the story, so he is out.

Those are just primary impressions and now I shall go through comments and suggestions line by line and bid you adieu, until tomorrow.

Summer flowers

Master's daughter and I are on a roll right now. She is catching my omniscient first person, that should not be there, and keeping me on track. So, I thought I would just share a summer flower today.

Master's Daughter plays head games

I do believe that my non-paid technical editor is playing some head game on me. It's not like she does not have enough to do, that she would spend time to actually make her mother think her mother (me) is going crazy.

On the 22nd she wrote, "I haven't had a chance to download the chapters." (I had sent her the next six) "I hope the edit I sent last week wasn't too discouraging." Whow! Great way to get my attention. She sent me back my first four chapters, edited and discouraging???? Where are they?

Okay, I got this late at night, and of course, I spent two hours searching for the missing email. Not in Spam, nor in deleated, nor in read, nor in new. I had messages about Christmas presents and about her Soldier son. There was a joke or two about ear plugs and Palin, not in the same vein mind you, althought that might have been a good idea. But, nowhere is there a "discouraging" or otherwise edit from Master's Daughter.

I wrote and told her I had not received the edit and that I would not consider a critique discouraging. I am an artist. I have been critiqued for twenty years. I can handle it. I would rather find out what is wrong from her before I submit and get a form rejection letter. I can hardly trust my own judgement on this as I ALWAYS think something, mostly everything, is wrong with my work. I will never submit my book if I go totally on my own instincts. I will edit the life out of it and out of me.

So, here I sit, watching to see my mail jump from 80, in my in box. I save mail, okay, so shoot me. It is still not jumping to 81.

Oh, I just looked. She sent me that note on the 23rd. Honestly, I thought it was like four days ago. Okay, so I cannot be too irritated. She does have a life. It is just, WHAT IS WRONG, GIRL??? I have serious revision work to do and I want to get started.

Are you out Trick or Treating again??

Back in Business

By the way, the book looks better to me again. Guess, I just need to keep my hands off editing when I am exhausted. Nothing ever works right at those times. I am back editing and lucky Master's Daughter was sent the first twelve chapters last night, for her final technical edit. I am sure she will wake up and be just delighted. After all, it's mid term time in Indiana and she has a room full of sixth grader's to grade.

How I spent my time off of writing.

I have been gone from writing for two whole weeks. That is probably the longest time I have gone without writing in two and a half years. I feel refreshed and ready to tackle line editing. I believe I left off on chapter twelve, but I will start from chapter eight, because I am now looking at it with a fresh eye.

My daughter, the teacher, has the first seven chapters to edit for grammar/punctuation/etc, so I don’t want to mess with that. I actually spent an evening/night, some Bailey’s Irish Crème and a lot of giggles with her the night of the wedding. We do not get to spend enough time together and she rented a motel room for us and mom. Mom was deep in sleep within minutes. I forced myself not to ask my daughter, the question, “How much do you hate it?” (meaning my book, and not her grandmother or her husband). I did not want to ruin the giggles.

I spent twelve hours behind the camera that day and, while I wanted to die by about 10:00 pm, I think I have discovered that, if I can spend twelve hours photographing a wedding, I can push exercise harder. My doctor will be so happy. Of course, it has taken me a few days to catch up.

I have also learned that twelve hours behind a camera equates to days and days and days of editing pictures; crop, color adjust, remove red eye, delete the pictures of the naughty Jr. bridesmaid who insisted on throwing her bouquet and making faces, etc. And, do a major adjust of the pictures in the Haunted Chapel. See here for explanation.
The Case of the Haunted Church « Savanvleck’s Weblog

I am sending off one full disc to the bride today because we took some pictures especially for her thank you cards and she is moving on the eleventh, and now I will take it a little easier with the other 2,143 mb of photos left. Let’s see, I sent 700 mb off—at two days of altering—that means I have like six days left. (That sound you hear is me groaning). But, they are not six full days.

Of Dark and Stormy Night

I believe it was the winter of 1995, that I attended Of Dark and Stormy Nights, mystery writers conference in Chicago. It was a great experience, but I was lost. These are the situations that bring out the introvert side of me.

I planned ahead of time, what events I would sit in on and I was given a critique with Eleanor Taylor Bland, a published Mystery writer. I was in heaven when she said, “Submit it.” And “Would you like the name of my agent.” As I’ve written before, I did submit it, but I did everything wrong.

Since then, I have learned how the process works and I have learned to edit more thoroughly, and, the most important thing I have learned is to follow your instincts.

The process includes submitting a properly formatted query letter, to the right agent/editor and with a really dynamic part about your protagonist’s character featured. Don’t “tell” them about the world or the mechanics or how long it took you to write it. Write it as if you are a published author, assume they know writing a book takes time, and feature your protagonist. I am not covering more here, because there are a ton of agents/editors out there who cover it in detail.

For querying see two of my favorites: Brooklyn Arden: Manifesto and Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent

As far as for editing, just as with writing, you will have to do through trial and error to find what works best for you. There are no hard and fast rules and you can go crazy trying to follow everyone’s advice. For plotting: I tried small index cards, large index cards, two different rolls of paper, and charts up the wazoo (just what is a wazoo anyway?). I tried a ton of methods before I found out what would work for me and, with the internet, it is so easy (but still time consuming) to read all that advice and decide for yourself.

Following your instincts is my final point on this sunny (in Indiana) day. Because, I knew my book was not ready to submit and I did it anyway, thus proving to one agent out there that I was an amateur. My novel was not completed yet and it needed some work on editing, as well as making my protagonist a stronger person.

I may not have found an agent at that conference, but it gave me the self-confidence to know that someday I would. And, the corner to turn is in sight.

Final edits and Scenes

The “almost” final edit lives on. I am beginning to think this is my way of putting off submitting anything. Although, in fairness, I do the same thing with painting.

When I finish a painting, I hang it in the dining room. Where I often get up, in the middle of a meal, to go and fix or change some aspect of said painting. It’s a great diet plan actually, but this is often how I end up overworking a painting and that is not a good thing; with a painting or a novel. The important thing is, you find the method that works for you.

Right now, I am stuck on my listing of scenes. I found an error, so I must go back and check every scene. This may seem like a throw-back to the Obsessive Compulsive gene that runs in my family; however, since I found other errors, it’s just a good move.

Early in this book, I was dividing scenes off and was doing it fairly well but I could not have given you a definition. Now, I understand, a bit better, what I am doing. (Always a good thing.)

The first two definitions are “time and place.” If you shift place, you have shifted to a new scene. If time jumps (it was Monday and now it is Friday) you are in a new scene.

Another important aspect is that “something must change.”

In checking the purpose of each of my scenes, I have found a scene that serves no purpose to my plot. I like the scene. But, it is a “moral lesson” type of scene and children don’t want to read lessons in their spare time. It would be iffy even if it had a purpose to the book. So, I have copied the scene out of the book and saved it to its own file. Maybe I can find a purpose for it in a future book and reword it. If not, it will hurt less to delete it a year from now, when it is not so close to being my baby.

There must be a reason for a scene to happen, or it is just taking up space and possibly, and you do not want this, boring your reader. So, go and make a chart (yes, the chart thing again) and divide your scenes to one row for each scene. Some scenes are half a page at most, some are several pages.

Again, see Beverly Brandt’s plotting, at: http://www.beverlybrandt.com/spreadsheet.htm
And my Blog of 08-07-17 Keeping track of facts in your novel.

You want that work to be the best it can be, so chart it out and really look at those scenes. After you know what your scenes are, and you can do this by printing your work out and drawing a line at the end of every scene. What is right, is whatever works for you.

But, they must:
Do they take place in one time and place?
Do they fulfill a purpose?

Each scene is a miniature story:
Does each scene have a beginning and a finish?
Is each scene absolutely necessary?
I am off now, to find more scenes to edit or cut. It may hurt, but it will make my book that much better.