Happy Sunday Everyone! I hope you’re enjoying the weekend.
Today (OK, yesterday) marked the Sixth 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.
Coming into this week, I started to feel concerned that I was getting repetitive. You know, “Here we are …Week six and I’m still editing.” Yes, there was that point where I finished reading the book out loud and switched to transcribing my notes into my Master Copy of the manuscript (ALWAYS make a copy of your master project before you start editing!!). And, yes, that’s a pretty significant point in the process but, after a week, what is there to add?
And I realize that this makes editing sound like a repetitive slog but, for me, nothing can be farther from the truth. I love editing. I love every part of the writing process, to be honest, which makes me wonder if I’m doing it right, because it seems like every writer I know has a least favorite part about writing, and I’m just not feeling that about any part of the process.
So yeah, on the surface, or on the blog, it can sound pretty repetitive, but you’ve got to look deeper than that. There are heaps of things going on when you’re down at the sentence (or paragraph, but no higher) level of the work. And it’s there that the magic happens, though not everybody gets it.
It’s hard to put into words the feeling that comes when you spot a word, or a phrase that isn’t quite what you meant, and then you come up with the exact thing that would go perfectly in that spot.
Sometimes what you get is the satisfaction that comes with knowing that you’ve smoothed out a rough spot, and that’s a pretty good feeling on it’s own.
But then…
Then you find a spot that’s already pretty good, but not quite “There” if you know what I mean. You find a spot like that and you make a change that causes you to sit back and think, “Yeah. I fucking NAILED that.”
If I could bottle that feeling, they’d probably curse my name for all time, because that isn’t something that you should be able to pop the top on and experience. That’s a feeling that you’ve got to earn.
That’s editing for me: Chasing the Awesome, and sometimes catching it.
Back to the nuts-n-bolts:
I figured out that, If I wanted to get through the rest of the manuscript by February 1, I’ll need to complete 14 pages a day, every day for the rest of the month. Given the amount of time I’ve got during the average day, I think I can manage that, even with ConFusion coming up on the 17th.
###
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 next week for Five-Thing Thursday!
Pingback:Editing JADE MOON WANING: Week 7 | Ken Schrader