cathschaffstump | Entries tagged with editing

More reading and editing. Another 20 pages last night, so we inch closer. The first week of the month is always difficult. It's always the week of board meetings and giri, so we squeeze as much writing time out of it as we can.

I've also been building the list of agents to submit to, and have found some good ones, both in and out of the AAR. I would prefer an agent in the AAR, but have found one set that feel like such a good fit to me--the Pixar/MacIntosh feel of their website makes me feel like I have come home! At any rate, the trick is to battle obscurity and get someone scrupulous to accept me.

Well, I need to be reading your list, so I'll be moving on.

Catherine

ps I'll be happy to start a new project. I miss the creative rush. The editing slog and the marketing crawl tend to take their toll on a writer. Maybe that's why we shouldn't do all of one at once?

Well, that's 125 pages read! Only about 300 more to go!

I got rhythm!!! (I also have an embarrassing number of typos!)

Probably off until Thursday, unless I sneak in a little time before Wednesday's board meeting, or during the video I show in Bartleby tomorrow...

Catherine

Just in case you wonder, I did in fact take exactly one day off, and it wasn't exactly to mope, although that is a natural reaction to rejection.

It was to WORK LIKE A DOG in my other life. You may or may not know that I am a college professor, and there are paper seasons. This is one of them.

Good friends are also coming to visit, and well, my house needed a thorough cleaning, my lawn needed mowed, my porch needed painting, and the ceiling in my dining room needed retexturized. So yes, the husband and I have been busy. When I found out the agent didn't need the rest, I shuffled my immediate priorities just a little differently.

***

I am still determined to send out to more agents. Those of you at the beginning of your career know the drill. Those of you in the middle of your career remember the drill. :) Persistance is key.

It's my hope to have the book ready and off again before I head out to Faerie Con in Philadelphia on October 11th. I would also like to have my list of potential agents organized and completed by then.

Hope you are all out there, being productive. I'll keep reading and sharpening. You too.

Catherine

How do you revise, oh fellow writers? I find when I work on a long term project, I draft and then go back to the beginning and add things in, and then draft some more, and then return to the beginning and add things in, and so on, until eventually I reach the end of the novel. It's sort of like combing the beach and looking for shells, and then revisiting what you've combed to see if other shells are left.

That said, I hit my 81,000 word mark, and now I've returned to the beginning. I've sharpened up the first 3 chapters. Chapter 4 will need some major tunage, because there are several brand new bits in 4. We'll progress right back up to where I stopped in chapter 7, and then begin again. I can say, with confidence now, that the first 3 chapters of Substance cohere well, and are in the shape I want them to be in.

Word count?

82,130 / 100,000
(82.1%)

And now, something narcissistic. Do you read your stuff again, and find it evokes you emotionally? One of the reasons I'm so hooked on writing is that I live my scenes. As I was working through the prologue, chapter one, and chapter two, I found a lot to like: fresh language, good story telling, and interesting characters. What I didn't expect was to be so moved during chapter one, which is a hard chapter to take, emotionally. My heart goes out to Stephan especially as I write about what's happening to him. I truly hope my readers have the same reaction, and they can forgive me for what I do to the poor boy in the book. I hope he can forgive me too.

I wonder how you feel about your characters. I hear some authors see their characters more like chess pieces. I think I'm too much of a method actress to be able to.

Honestly, if I get to work, and have a spare moment, I will post some snippets. Those of you who want snippets will have to resort to writing my boss and asking the college to back off. Whoops! Other life leakage! Nipping that in the bud...

See you tomorrow night.

Catherine

Damn the torpedos, but you ARE formatted through chapter 6!

Catherine

I'll be discussing this with more of my writing peeps who are familiar with Substance, but at this point, I find myself wondering which is the better strategy:

1. Should I stop the first book after Esme's Trial and wrap up, making it a shorter book (around 67.5K, the old YA length?) I would need to focus much more on Esme and build the Rowther experience to the tune of about 20K, in addition to keeping the spotlight on Errol and Stephan.

2. Should I try to carry on through after Errol's Trial and go with a long book? Right now, that would take me 80K without a good wrapup, so I could balloon up to 100K. I'm not sure, if that's the case, how I will wrap up the book.

I'll be doing a very technical edit this weekend (remind me to curse the replace mechanism on Word!), so I'll have time to solicit ideas and let this munge around in my mind. Earnestly, the first option will probably take more effort than the second. I wonder if the depth in the first option would make the book a better experience. My readers seem to think the story is strong, but I feel I'm not going deep on option two because I have so much material already. I wonder if I just answered my own questions.

Those of you familiar with the story, both readers and writers, I welcome your advice and opinions. I would certainly still write the rest of the story, it's that the book series would become six books at least with the first option.

Thinkity think think think!

Catherine

Some new reading reveals that most YA novels are 40K to 60K, so I've reduced the number I'm shooting for to 80K, and I'll hope to shorten it more to a conventional length. Please note that the patchwork stuff I put together tonight is NOT real writing. It's about 4 scenes and some notes about what I need to do to make this all smooth. Some of it will be chopped out, but mostly it will be added to.

I've decided chapter 3 is where we deal with humanizing Isolde, Atreus (yeah, like that's going to happen), and the opposition forces. Writing chapter three will take me a while longer than the preface, chapter one, and chapter two.

I didn't work on it more than a half an hour tonight. Bryon was kind enough to read what I have so far, and help me with stupid corrections, and since there were already 78 pages, that took a while. Meanwhile, I got my first agent query already to go when this is ready. Yup, did my homework for that one.

Here's what we did tonight: