Happy Sunday Everyone! I hope you’re enjoying the weekend.
Today (OK, yesterday) marked the fourth full week of editing the current WIP: JADE MOON WANING.
For those of you that might be hopping on with this post, you can find Week 1 here.
This week, Wednesday, actually, saw the end of the “Read it Out Loud” editing pass. I’m kinda glad it’s over. I can’t be said to be the swiftest of readers to begin with, and reading the work out loud slows me down a little.
I am now in the “Transcription” phase, where I take my hand-written notes, and move them into a copy (ALWAYS make a copy of your master project before you start editing!! Then make a copy of each subsequent pass!) of the Master Project – which will become the new Master Project when I’m finished.
I use the word Phase, but this is actually an entire separate editing pass (When I’m done, this will make two complete passes before I’m comfortable letting another set of eyes look at it).
This pass is a bit more reading intensive than you might think. I’m not just moving from Note-to-note and dropping in changes, I’m reading the whole thing through, carefully.
I do this for two reasons: The first is that even though I’ve read the entire damned thing out loud, I still find minor spelling glitches.
The second, and more important reason is that I’m looking at every change to make sure that any change is exactly what I meant. You’ve heard that writing is both an art and a craft? This is the craft part. Every word is specifically chosen to convey a specific meaning.
This week was a bit different with it being so close to the holiday, and I expect the next couple of weeks to be hit or miss in terms of getting up and editing. I my not make my January first deadline (Self imposed), but I’ve got several days when I can really sit down and get to work.
We’ll see how it goes, and I’ll post it here.
###
Be sure to stop by the Freebies page for story Excerpts.
If you’ve read, and enjoyed any of my books, please consider leaving a review:
Weird Wild West
Trials
Chasing the Light
I’ll see you again for the next Five-Thing Thursday!