March Challenge- the Editing Pub Crawl

Editing Pub Crawl

The First Step

You’ve finished your novel, but the celebration is over. Now you have to figure out what to with it. Ponder your options with a 5 minute word war. 

Word Count: 146  3/12

Printing

You’ve decided to edit your novel, which means it’s time to print it out. While you wait for the printer to spit it out, you do a 1k sprint.

Word Count:  1,017   3/12

The Read Through

Your novel has been printed, a mountain of paper large enough to be used as a weapon. You settle down to read it with a 30 minute war.

Word Count:

First Impressions

You started out thinking that it’s not that bad, but by the time you’ve reached the end you can see the truth. There are plot holes big enough to drive a truck through and your characters seem so shallow. As you think of how to fix them, you do a 500 word sprint.

Word Count:

But What Does it Really Mean?

You’ve gone backwards and forwards trying to find the solution to the problems in your novel, but you keep getting lost. You settle down to figure out why you really wrote this novel and what your novel is really about. While you think, you do an Epic Music Hour.

Word Count:

Ripping into the Guts

You’re now prepared to do a full edit, to dig into the guts of your words and find ones that are better. Armed with colored pens, you set to work while writing the last 3 digits of your last WIP.

Word Count:

Beta Readers

You’ve edited your novel until your eyes cross, but the plot holes have been filled and your characters strengthened. Now it’s time to let others read it and leave their mark. While you wait for the beta readers to do their work, you do a 20 minute war. 

Word Count:

Final Draft

Your beta readers have returned your story and you’ve fixed the issues that they’ve spotted. Your novel is finally finished! You celebrate by sprinting to the nearest thousand!

Word Count:

Total For Crawl: 1163

I did do the remainder of the challenges eventually, but not within the time constraints.

Hiding from my Inner Editor

March

EdMo - the Month for Editing. Let’s just talk a bit about it for this month’s prompt.. Revision

Oh, must we? I've locked my inner editor away and moved into a tower on a different continent where she can't find me and harp about how terrible my writing is...

What is the one thing you struggle with when it comes to editing? 

     When Editing, I struggle most with restructuring the plot and scenes. I loathe the "re-writing" phase, because I have so much difficulty getting the words down on the page in the first place. I am not a prolific writer, and I want the scene to "just be right" the first time, requiring at most grammar, spelling and sentence structure corrections in editing, and maybe dialogue re-working if my character comes across incorrectly when I'm re-reading.

What is the one thing that you find easy to do? 

     I like editing for grammar- I find it simple, and most of my mistakes are just because I was writing quickly (or while overtired, which happens more often than not.)

What is your favorite editing tip?

     If you don't know the meaning of the words off the top of your head, don't use it (unless it's a cultural thing). I have been a reader for years, and my vocabulary tends to be wider than most. If I don't know the word- actually don't know it, as opposed to looking it up for specific definition or spelling- then anyone reading my writing would probably need to look it up as well. And who wants to stop in the middle of a story to go grab a dictionary?

Bonus: Take a selfie/novel-ie of you/your novel in the midst of revision.

     Nope, sorry- these pictures do not exist. I don't currently have anything in the editing process, and if I stop to edit now, I'll never get back to the first drafts. This is a proven fact, and a major reason that after seven years of writing, I still have no finished works.

Ouch, that hurt- a February Progress Report

February Goals

• Write and publish Blog Circle Post
• Finish Romance Pub Crawl by the end of the month
• 15 Days of the consistency challenge
• 10k
  
  February total- 1756 words.
  So, that was an awful month for writing. I think my motivation just died. I mean, sure I was busy- company merge, fixing all the computers that broke last month, filing taxes, my sister had a birthday, planning for a convention in March and vacation in May... Stuff happened. Just not writing stuff.
  Partially because the nerve in my write arm kept lighting up and since I have a data entry job, I didn't want to push it by writing at home.
  But still, less than 2k is pathetic.
  
  Ah well- here's to a better March!
                                    - Jay