The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: editing

  • The NaNoWriMo Postgame Report

    http://www.nanowrimo.org
    Though I didn’t write as many words as last year and I’m setting aside the manuscript to work on something else, I still won. So NaNoWriMo isn’t going to be over for a while.

    Brought to you by:

    Caffeine and Sugar: the fuel of frenetic and writers everywhere. Caffeine and Sugar bring the inspiration!

    Enough of that silliness. Can you tell I’m a little slap-happy?

    Oh, boy, was this an interesting NaNoWriMo.

    Let’s start with this bit from a post on my blog:

    I let it sit for a while, got some very positive feedback that was encouraging and finally got around to editing it. Recently I sent the book to a publisher and got a great note back asking for some changes and to resubmit it.

    That note came about ten days or so before the beginning of NaNoWriMo. It changed the whole month for me. I set some very modest goals of hitting the 50K mark by the end of the month, to average 2K words per day, then to write every day.

    (more…)

  • The Intermission After ‘Winning’

    Since last we met, I haven’t written one word on my NaNoWriMo novel. Not one.

    I’ve been thinking about it, working out some story problems and I sure haven’t been sitting on my hands. Instead, I went back and started editing (again!) and revising last year’s novel for passive-voice verbiage.

    Hoo boy. That’s been a LOT of work. I wrote about that on my blog on Wednesday.

    Why am I doing this? I don’t I’ve mentioned it here but I got feedback from the publisher I sent last year’s novel to ‘revise and resubmit’ it. Since I’m writing the sequel to that novel for this year’s NaNoWriMo, reaching the word count goal and then going back to edit made sense.

    Because I’m seeing a lot of things I can clean up besides just the passive stuff. And once that’s done then I can clean up the passive stuff in the current work and make everything better going forward.

    I’ll cover a lot of this in the postgame report post next week, and hopefully be able to tell you that I’ve finished the work.

    But making it to 50K was a big deal. It always is. Yes, I made it to that goal a couple hours before Christie did but only because she let me. The push between her and Ashley and me was a lot of fun and made it a good challenge to get me to that point. I might not have done it without those two working alongside me. I’m grateful for the motivation.

    So. That’s the update. Next week I’ll look back and give you my impressions of the entire month.

  • Forgive me, Padre

    Forgive me, Padres, for I have sinned. And I will continue to sin, throughout the month of November.

    My confession?

    I edit. During NaNoWriMo.

    I edit every single day. Sometimes more than once. I probably spend as much time editing during November as I do writing.

    There. I said it.

    Now, let me explain. (shh, Padre, shh. You can assign me my act of penance later. First, an explanation for my awful behavior. The other parishioners can wait, dammit!)

    I have tried, over the last seven years, to adhere to the mantra (as an aside: there are virtually no rules in NaNoWriMo beyond 50k in 30 days. But there ARE suggestions, and some are more zealously encouraged than others. This is one of those) “DO NOT EDIT.” You will see these sagely words of wisdom repeatedly and with various means of emphasis during NaNoWriMo.

    The reasoning behind this school of thought is that your inner editor is, in almost every case, a man/woman with his/her hand on the brake lever, ready at any moment to pull a Full Stop on your writing progress. And, in the process, scream epithets in your ear about the utter uselessness and awfulness of your writing efforts during November.

    To wit: your inner editor is an asshole.

    So, during NaNo, where the goal is 50k in 30 days, many writers make the conscious effort to lock their inner editors away, in deep vaults under heavy mountains on distant planets, and throw the keys into the fiery furnace of the local star.

    No editing = no brakes, and no internal monologue of self-loathing.

    Does this work? For some/many/most people, yes, absolutely.

    For me? Nope. No way.

    My stopping mechanism is different. It’s not a set of brakes being applied by a hypercritical inner child whose parents never showed any affection or approval. It’s rusty, creaky, near-to-frozen gears of thought that need constant and lavish lubrication to allow the machine to even function, let alone move forward at more than a snail’s pace.

    What’s my manuscript-writing-machine lubricant of choice? My WD-40?

    Editing.

    During November, I write for a few minutes. Then I stop. I ponder. I reconsider. I go backwards. I tweak. I add words. I rearrange paragraphs. I interject conversations.

    I edit. Line by line. And while, on occasion, that results in the deletion of words, the net effect is always, always, an increase in word count.

    Unfortunately, this line-editing process does mean that I move slowly. Sometimes embarrassingly slowly. Last year (much to the perverse delight of my local WriMos) I wrote 67 words during a 15-minute sprint. 67. That’s…not fast. That’s the opposite of fast. Writing 1,667 words a day, words I’m willing to live with, takes me forever. So, when people say they’re busy during November, I tend to roll my eyes. Busy? You have no idea.

    It’s my own fault, but, yeah.

    The next day, when I first open my manuscript?

    I get sadistic.

    I reread my scenes, and then I kick my complacent characters down the stairs. Then I march down the stairs and punch said character in the head, steal their lunch money, and make fun of their hair style. Then I stand back and see how they react to my torture. If it’s boring, I go back in and do it again. With flair and panache. Rinse and repeat, until my re-re-re-read elicits an evil grin.

    Once I’m happy with my new, revised, dastardly scene, I rinse and repeat.

    Write. Line edit. Sleep. Torture.

    The end result has been, historically, a manuscript that’s passable. Not necessarily a first draft, but not exactly a zero draft either. Zero point five. Zero point seven, if I let my ego speak its mind.

    So, yeah. I edit. It’s part of my process, and for me, it works.

    Don’t agree with me? Cool. Have your own process that works? More power to you. And if anyone tells you your approach is wrong?

    Push them down the stairs.

     

    P.S. Two more quick things. 1. Square brackets are your friends! [insert something pithy here]. 2. Retconning during your own story is completely acceptable. There’s no WAY my Chapter Four can happen without completely rewriting Chapter Two. [Change Chapter Two in December] fixes that.

  • Watching the Frantic Masses

    So, to most of you it has only been a week since I gushed about my plans for NaNo and confided to all of you about my fears. For me it’s been three weeks and in those three weeks I realized something.

    I may pretend to be crazy, a lot of people maythink that I’m crazy, but I’m really not. Or at least, I don’t want to be.

    I decided to sit this NaNo out. What’s that mean for me? It means that I’m getting eight hours of sleep. It means that I’m able to maintain a social life. It means that I am responsible for cooking my own meals.

    Hmm… maybe it’s not too late to change my mind again… I was really looking forward to having all my meals catered.

    All of that aside, I think sitting NaNo out was the right decision for me this year. I haven’t had any down time since May and it was beginning to show. If I have some extra time, I’ll flip through my novel from last year. Maybe with a fresh set of eyes I’ll be able to get it scrubbed up enough to start sending out. But if I don’t this month, that’s okay. I’m not going to stress about it. I’ll be the well-rested one at the write-ins. The person who isn’t guzzling coffee at ten pm.

    Aren’t you jealous?

  • The Un-NaNo Solution

    By the time this gets posted, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) will have begun. But not for me.

    Last year was my second attempt at NaNoWriMo. After failing the first year, I met 2011 with determination and attacked NaNo with gusto. I took a full week off of work at the start. I hit it hard. And by November 30th I had 50,000 words.

    They weren’t great words. In fact, I had written several scenes by the seat of my pants, unsure where they would fit within the structure of the novel. I had sub-plots that died out. I had characters who remained under-developed. And when I looked back on my story, I realized that several things were happening TO my main character, not BECAUSE of her.

    I wanted to start editing my mess of a zero draft, but first there was Christmas, then one thing, then another. The year flew by. The next thing I knew, my friends were talking about NaNoWriMo again.

    (more…)

  • Start. Stop. Fix it. Ugh.

    I can keep this week’s post very short.

    The easiest thing about writing? Writing. Telling the story, inventing characters, creating places and events and conflicts and disasters. Delving into the motivations of the cast of sundry folk that make the plot twist and turn.

    That’s easy.

    The penultimate hardest part? Starting. Pushing past the inertia of not writing to start writing again. Once I remove the chocks and get the wheels rolling, I’m good. But I stop and start (which I shouldn’t, but I do) and that initial start is…very tough.

    The absolute worst part? Editing. Not copy-editing. That’s stupidly easy, and I do it on the fly. But going back and editing the actual story? Uh…how do you DO that? Maybe that’s  Which is why I haven’t bothered…yet. Gotta start that some time, but…see penultimate hardest part for my issue with that. 🙂

  • Write for Yourself; Edit for Others

    I never worried about judgment of my writing before I started to submit my work. As I continue to put myself out there, and now that I have my first short story published, I find myself suddenly paranoid about what people are going to think when they read my stuff.

    I don’t think it ever really crossed my mind before, though, to worry what the people I know would think of the subject matter of my stories. Well, in the sense that they’d be offended, anyway. My main concerns about judgment were more about whether they’d think my writing was horrible.

    I don’t fear the horrible writing criticism much anymore, mostly because I know that I’ve grown a great deal as a writer over the years and most of what I write isn’t horrible. Also because I know I write better than a lot of bestsellers these days, so obviously there is no accounting for good writing anymore.

    Alas, I digress. (more…)

  • Your Editor: The Frenemy You Will Love to Hate

    When I first started working at my current job, the HR department emailed everybody what they considered a fun game— find all 10 spelling and grammar errors in a page of text, and you could win a gift card.

    I found fourteen.

    OK, so at least two “errors” were more in the realm of stylistic choices— Oxford commas and so forth— but I won the gift card. And then I became my bureau’s copy editor.

    My style of editing is fairly instinctual. I’m looking for one thing above all else— does it make sense? Would a reasonably intelligent and half awake member of the target audience be able to understand it? I do look for ambiguous language, typos, grammar errors, and logical consistency, but I’m also looking at language rhythm and flow.

    Sure, you can study this. You can sit down with a grammar [0] and styleguide and memorize the rules. But the best way to learn what good writing looks like is to read lots and lots of good writing. Read it obsessively. Read it until the rules of language have seeped deep into your bones.

    Also, read bad language [1]. Try to figure out why it is bad. How would you improve it? Is it confusing? Does it ramble? Does the logic flow? Are there spelling errors? Is it utterly lacking in capitalization, punctuation, paragraph breaks, and other bourgeois affectations [2]? Your goal is to become on of those douchebags. You know the kind I mean. As your edit-fu grows strong, and for extra credit, try turning your attention to any newspaper’s Op-Ed pages.

    Editing your own work is phenomenally difficult. It is impossible to edit and compose at the same time, so don’t even try. They use physically different parts of your brain, so you’ll have to do each in a separate pass. You may find it useful to use a different technique for each pass— for example, I compose on paper, but edit on the screen, then proofread again where possible on paper.

    Also, you will have to create a physical and mental distance between yourself and your work. After you have finished writing it, stick it in a drawer for a while. For a blog post, a couple of hours. Term paper or feature length article, a whole day. Your novel? At least a month.

    Your best editing tool will always be another person. Not a close friend, not a family member, not someone who wishes to spare you hurt feelings. An honorable enemy is best [3]. Someone who is willing to be brutally honest, explain in exacting detail where and how you’ve screwed up, and assassinate your children in front of you. Someone who is willing to tear your ego into little tiny shreds and stomp them into the mud. Choose for your editor the nastiest, most vicious drill sergeant you can find, with all the gentle sweetness of a hungover wolverine. Learn their favorite drink, because you’ll be buying a lot for them.

    Read their comments very, very carefully. Then stick the whole manuscript back into the drawer. Get mad. Rant, rave, wail, moan, gnash your teeth, tear your hair, and clutch your pearls. Tearfully explain to your very best friend that your sunovabich editor Just Doesn’t Get It. Get drunk and have the same conversation with the smelly guy sitting at the far end of the bar.

    A week later, when you’ve finally gotten over yourself and the hangover has abated, pull your magnum opus back onto your desktop and reread your editor’s comments. Figure out where they’re right, and why they’re right, and how to fix it.

    Congratulations. You’ve now achieved the rewrite.

    [0]  Allow me to recommend The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed by Karen Elizabeth Gordon.
    [1] The Internet being a particularly rich trove.
    [2] Dear Random Netizen: Typing in all lower case was individualistic and stylish when e. e. cummings did it. On you, it just looks like you don’t know what the shift key is for.
    [3] Think the Poker Game of Mystery Writers on the TV show Castle. They’re always eager to tell Castle he’s full of shit.

  • Exercises in Failure & the Editing Process

    I hate editing. I have failed every goal I’ve ever set when editing. I stumble in the same spot every time.

    It’s not killing my darlings. Whatever, kill those bastards. I never liked them anyway.  (Oh my god that’s such a lie, please, come back, babies.) I like going through the novel and finding the things that worked. I like those moments when you realize, “Wow, this is a legitimate novel,” and the moments where you throw the manuscript across the room and scream, “I WILL NEVER WRITE AGAIN.”

    Here’s my process. (more…)

  • Ruling Them All

    I’m a fan of rules. Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing have been invaluable to me as I’ve made progress towards being a better storyteller. Now that I’m in the realm of having to actually edit the things that I’m writing before I share them with anyone, I have a new set of rules to learn.

    The two biggest influences on me as far as editing goes are Self-Editing for the Fiction Writer by Browne & King and David Mamet’s Three Uses of the Knife.

    Both books are terrific primers for the writer who needs to take his writing to another level, the next level, whatever. I won’t go into them because, really, if you’re interested you’ll go find both books, flip through them and see what you think. You may have to go to a library to be able to look at them first (or maybe Amazon) but you definitely should.

    What I want to talk about this week is what I’m doing with my current work in progress because I’m trying something different.

    Instead of reading the story from start to finish, making notes and changing the little things that bug me in the draft, I’m working backwards. At least, I’m reading each chapter, noting what happens and also noting what changes I think should be made, jotting down things like “foreshadow this”. I’m doing this on paper with a red pen, which is terribly satisfying.

    What I’m looking for are several things:

    • Is the POV consistent? I mean: am I head-hopping from one character to another? This is probably the biggest thing that I need to keep working on. If I’m jumping from one point of view to another, is there a reason for it? If not, fix it.
    • I also look for actions that keep getting repeated. For instance everyone ‘turns’ to someone or something else in every Zero Draft I’ve ever written. Along the same lines, actions have to be realistic and possible. It’s usually in the actions of a character that I’ve made some horrible mistake, like having them walk across a room to the glass they set down in the paragraph before.
    • Working backwards, I’m looking for things that are important to the ending in the beginning, so I’m making notes about foreshadowing things or mentioning things that are important at least twice before they become important later. I’ve read that is called The Rule of Three. It works for me, but it isn’t original.
    • Typos. Yeah, I look for typos and obvious mistakes like using ‘she’ when I meant ‘he’ and all the other things that get dropped or glossed over in the Zero Draft.

    By the time I’ve gotten through the entire manuscript, I’ve got a legitimate First Draft. Not necessarily one that I want to show my Beta Readers, but one that I can be proud of and decide whether or not I want to go back through and ensure that the plot makes sense and the story is told. It’s in the First Draft status that I start actually refining the story into something readable.

    This is all very mechanical and these are the rules that work for me. They’re becoming more ingrained as I go along, and I’m afraid it’s not very entertaining at this point. Make no mistake, readers, editing your work is Work. It has to be done. It’s that rare genius who can write a near-complete book in one pass. I’m not that genius.

    I’m just the guy who has to have rules to work with.