The Editing Puzzle

My smartph Move it! Free - Block puzzle- screenshot thumbnail one has a game on it called Move It! by AI Factory. The game is a spatial relations game, where you have pieces of various shapes on a board, and you have to move them around until you can guide a red square into the upper right hand corner. The game is fun, frustrating, and highly addictive.

Move It! is a lot like editing—at least the stage of editing where I am now. IVeritas-Cover-Art-231x300 have a WIP that I just finished putting through my critique group. I have reams of helpful suggestions that I cannot wait to get moving on—but there is so much work to be done, I find myself faced with a plethora of pieces scattered on a board of unknown dimensions.

Move It! specifies a target number—the least moves required to clear the board. Alas, my editing does not come with a target number.

My editing notes include checking for conflict in each scene, making sure Scene A leads logically to Scene B, noting my character goals for each scene. I need to follow character arcs, plot arcs, goal arcs. I have 3 POV characters, so I plan to separate their scenes out and listen to voice, check for character consistency, and make sure they are three-dimensional.

I also want to check continuity, symbolism, and rhythm. My ending needs some help, and the entire book needs a language overhaul because it sounds too middle grade and it’s YA. And of course there’s the nitty gritty of grammar, punctuation, and formatting.

Even with the target number, your game can run away with you. I had one game with a target of 72 moves and ended up with 265. I’m hoping to avoid that problem while editing, but you never know because when you change one story piece that changes them all.

At this moment, I am looking at the board, wondering how I can move those manuscript pieces in the most efficient way to get my book to the final position. I’m a bit overwhelmed and unsure where to start.

How you begin in Move It! sets you up for success or failure. A false start will get you to 265*. A good start narrows your available moves until only the successful path is left open to you.

Let’s hope I choose the right starting move with my manuscript.

How do you organize a huge editing project like this?

*My current score on that target 72 game is 76.

Final Edits While Failing NaNo

I said a couple of weeks ago that I was “sort of” doing NaNo. That I would be trying to finish the final 23 chapters of my book (around 23,000 words). Here’s how it’s going.

I got a good deal of writing in two weekends ago. I now have 17 chapters left to write. It felt good to break the 20-chapter barrier, I’ll tell you!

But I don’t know if I will make it by the end of November. Why?

Because in that same blog post, I had said that if I got my edits back from my publisher, it would derail my WIP’s progress.

And I got my final edits back from my publisher last week! YAY!!

While the edits were relatively minor, I still am not finished. I printed out the manuscript Monday morning and am now giving it a final read-through with my trusty red pen. I am reading it aloud, so where I can do this is limited (my daughter’s dance class was not an option). I have completed reading 30 pages of 190.

This is going to take a while.

And that is why I’m not sure I will finish my WIP by the end of November.

However, I am so excited about these final edits, because that moves us closer to the book being “real.” Once the edits are complete, it can be placed on the publishing schedule. We can start working on the cover. We can finalize the title. We can start getting blurbs. We can talk about marketing strategies.

It’s getting real, folks. The crazy ride that is a debut novel is starting.

Strap in and enjoy the ride!

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It’s the Little Things

I’ve been feeling pretty overwhelmed this past week. As if one thing after another has been piling on until I’m buried. Some of the overwhelm has been because I’ve had social obligations, and my anxiety disorder makes me stress.

But it’s not only the social obligations. I have felt like this before, and it’s usually not the social stuff that makes me feel like I’m drowning. This time, I tried to analyze what exactly was weighing on me. To my surprise, it’s the little things.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, the large projects don’t bother me. Maybe because I expect them to take a long time, and have set my mind to that. It’s what I call the “small” projects that pile up. These are projects that I could finish in less than 4 hours, if I could just sit down and do it.

They aren’t all writing related. I have photo albums that need to be put together (I’m about 3 years behind). I had photos to send to relatives (my in-laws are far away, so I email them a lot of photos of my daughter). I have genealogy pictures and papers to scan and put in the database. I have about 6 hours of TV to watch on DVR. I have photos and artwork I need to clean up to put on Zazzle. I have a novel I want to look at again because I think the focus needs work. I have a short story I want to edit and polish. And I am pushing through a WIP (35 chapters left).

That doesn’t even take into consideration the 2 blog posts a week and the daily stuff of life. And more pops up every day.

It’s the accrual of all these small projects that overwhelm me. I look at my To-Do list, and realized that if I had a week without a child and without blog posts, I could probably knock off 80% of my list, because it’s all “small” projects. Of course, I will not have a childless week, so I have to juggle.

Lately, I have been pushing to finish my WIP. Because I’ve been writing that in all my free time, the other projects have piled up. So now I have to go the other way, stopping the WIP to knock out enough of these projects so I feel like I can breathe.

I think it’s a blessing and bane of us creative types that we always have multiple projects in many media going. How do you carve out time for varying projects? Do you have specific days or hours for different projects? Or do you just do whatever strikes your fancy when you have time?

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A Pantser Plots: Bringing Old Friends to Life

I am usually a hybrid when it comes to outlining. I know my beginning and ending and a few of the big points in the middle, and then just let the words rip. For my current Work-In-Progress (WIP), I wanted to plan ahead more.

This is my first “from scratch” novel since my daughter was born. I know that I have much less free time to write, so I wanted to be able to make the most of the time I had. I figured if I knew what needed to happen next before I sat down to write, I could use my time more efficiently. So this time around, I decided to plot more.

First I just did the four major beats: turning point (end of Act I), midpoint, black moment (end of Act II), climax. That was enough to get me to the end of Act I, because the beginning had been very clear in my head. Then I looked ahead and realized I would need a more detailed outline—something new for me.

This book is new for me on many levels—in particular, it is dual point-of-view (POV). I realized after getting to the end of Act I that I needed to plot so that I could see the flow of POV chapters. During the messy middle the POV characters are separated (thus the need for 2 POVs). So I had to make sure one storyline was not much shorter than the other. And in doing so I realized I needed to bring in a third POV to make it all work.

The third POV is a spirit that possesses the female POV character, and the female POV character cannot see or hear what is happening while she is possessed. But the reader needs to know. So in essence the third POV takes the place of the first POV character at times. Confused, yet?

Yeah, that’s why I needed an outline.

Finally, this WIP is based on a complete but very poorly written novel I wrote about 30 years ago (yes, I was only 14). I always loved the characters and the premise, but I am a considerably better writer than I was as a freshman in high school. A year or so ago, these characters came back into my mind and would not leave. I got so enthused about writing them again that I had to do it.

The old manuscript had pretty much everything wrong with it, but it served as a rough guide. One big problem with it was that it was written in omniscient POV, which I had no intention of using in the new book. So when it came to the big battle scenes in the middle/end of Act II, I could not jump from POV to POV to POV of all these minor characters. Wrestling the main events of the battle (and events leading up to it) so my male POV could be in the key places was another huge reason I needed to outline.

Although based on the same premise as that old manuscript, this WIP is vastly different plot-wise, and vastly better craft-wise. I am so excited to be writing these old friends again and finally being able to do them justice.

Have you ever gone back to an old work and given it new life? Or has an old work given you new life?

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Collaboration: The Meeting of the Minds

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that my middle grade WIP, The Egyptian Enigma is the product of a collaboration with two totally awesome co-writers, James Kempner and Jeff Pero. You will also know that we just got incredibly detailed and spot-on notes from developmental editor Kathryn Craft on said WIP. So now we have massive revisions to do.

How do you do that with three people?

The revisions are fundamental in that we have to restructure the plot. That means adding scenes, re-envisioning existing scenes, and cut, cut, cutting what we already have. In essence, it means starting over.

I don’t mean totally, of course. There are many existing scenes we will be able to rework and salvage, and our characters will remain much as they are. But since the plot needs so much work, our process is starting over again.

We are having a meeting Dec 28 to discuss everything and get a new outline for the book. We have an agenda, because with 3 authors it is important to know what we will talk about so as not to waste time or run off on tangents. We know from experience that we can only work productively together for about 3 hours and then our focus collapses. So we have no time to lose. Thus the agenda.

To make our time even more efficient, we are all going to email each other our ideas for the new plot. We will do this a week before we meet, so we have time to read and react and absorb everyone’s ideas. Then we will discuss on the 28th and come to a final plot, a final outline. The hope is that the best of our ideas will come together and create some alchemical magic so we have a lean, strong, potent new outline.

Once we have that, I get to work. I will write the new first draft. Then it goes to Jim, who gives it to Jeff, who gives it back to me for a final voice revision.

Before all of that, though, there will be the meeting of the minds—and the synergy that comes with it.

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