The AW Editing Month Extravaganza

Sage

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Cheering you all on!
Only 1% snuck in between work, a movie, and the BP. Tomorrow will not be much better, but I have high hopes for Tuesday and Wednesday. If Tuesday's good, Wednesday will be the same. If not, I will be a doubly-sad Sage
 

mrsmig

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After two days of nothing much accomplished on the editing front, I got several hours of uninterrupted work done today and cut just under 500 words from the MS. I'm drawing closer to the end of the MS and will probably fall well short of my 10k editing goal, but I feel pretty darned good about the 4k+ I've cut thus far. I might be content if I can lose 5k.

And I finished my Beta Project assignments. :hooray:
 

EMaree

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My goals.

Finished the scene outline on the 14th. I'm now working away on the read-through and the tense rewrite, which I've combined into one task because rewriting-as-I-read seems to work for me.
 

mrsmig

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Between the departure of the houseguests and having an audition this afternoon, I managed another 321 words. Plus I got a callback audition!
 

PandaMan

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I just stumbled onto this thread, so I hope I'm not too late to join in on the fun and games. Right now I'm working on the openings to multiple stories within a nested frame story. There are lots of stories within stories and the transitions are tricky. They all relate to each other and even relate to my own life so it's been fun and challenging. Oh, and this is my first novel.

I was hoping to have this ready for the Beta Project but had to be out of town last week. Bummer I missed the deadline!


Username: PandaMan
March goal: Work on the openings to each story within a nested frame novel. Clean up some POV issues.
Title: Mountains and Rivers Without End
Genre: Fantasy
 

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Only 2% done today, but that' pretty good considering I had an extra long chorus rehearsal
 

mrsmig

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Another 350 words today, as I close in on the end of the book. About another 20 pages left.
 

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Do you think you'll at least make 5K cut total?

I'm at 3% for today. Considering going to bed.
 

mrsmig

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Do you think you'll at least make 5K cut total?

I'm at 3% for today. Considering going to bed.

Not sure. I have to cut another 317 words to make 5k, and I think that's a lot to ask of 20 pages. We'll see how close I get.
 

mrsmig

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Carved out a final 345 words, and I'm done (at least for now).

I took a fat 151,034 manuscript down to a pleasingly plump 146,000 (well, 145,999 if I'm being exact). That's a loss of 5,035 words. It's well below the 10k goal I set, but I'm pretty happy about it.

Most of the cuts came from simple tightening: cutting out repetition, filtering and unnecessary dialogue tags. If I want to cut any more, I'm going to have to look at whole scenes.
 
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CoffeeBeans

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21 pages edited in the document today. Eight of which were total rewrites, and made me very frustrated. It is, however, the first real progress on the doc itself. (Everything else has been revision on paper)

Thankfully, that means I have pretty much three fixed scenes off the top. I know I have a full rewrite scene in a few, but the next are all "please explain what on earth is going on here" scenes... which ought to be less trouble.

I took a fat 151,034 manuscript down to a pleasingly plump 146,000 (well, 145,999 if I'm being exact).

I don't know if I could have helped myself from leaving one extra word...
 

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"I could cut the 'up' from 'she stands up,' but that would ruin my word count."
 

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Most of the cuts came from simple tightening: cutting out repetition, filtering and unnecessary dialogue tags. If I want to cut any more, I'm going to have to look at whole scenes.

This will hurt during the process, but will leave you with more satisfying word count jumps. Good idea to do it in this order because after cutting out 1K in one swoop, cutting it out word by word seems so unproductive. (Usually I do it all at the same time)
 

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Woo, triple post.

3% so far today. It's on 71% in my Kindle. This means I've revised 50% of the book so far this month, since I started on 21%

It is all I can do not to write another book (or 2) right now. If it wasn't for this challenge, I never would have stuck with this revision. I'm pretty much in plotting mode when I can't revise.

ETA: I refuse to post 4 times in a row. So here I update that I got to 5% today. Really I just kept going because I wanted to get to the end of the old notebook. I had two pages left, and I was like, nope, I'm going to start tomorrow in the new notebook. I did leave a third of a page blank, but it's because I found a slightly more natural stopping point than I'd probably have had if I had gone to the end of the page. The next chapter/POV switch is too far to make it, unfortunately.
 
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PandaMan

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I got nutt'n done yesterday except lots of reading. Sick in bed all day.

Got lots done today though. Deleted the entire first scene of Chap Four and rewrote the entire chapter. That baby was the first scene in a novel I ever wrote (and it showed!). Painful, painful, painful, just like the kidney stone I had yesterday.:cry:
 

EMaree

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Beta reading is sucking up all my editing time, but it can't be helped. These poor souls have been waiting far too long for my feedback...
 

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4% revised today.

Also 2.5 scenes written in a book that I can't even start in April, much less now. So there's that.
 

PandaMan

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Got some POV issues cleared up today in chap four, five, and six. Feel good about it.
 

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3/4 of the way through my monthly goal!

I'm going to try to get out another 1% before bed, since a) they seem to be going fast today, and b) that'll give me a nice 5% for the day.
 

mrsmig

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Yay, PandaMan! Go go go Sage!
 

Sage

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Got to 90% in my Kindle last night. I wanted to get that one extra percent to make me 10% off (because the Kindle shows me where I am, not what's finished), but I hit the end of a chapter (twice) and decided to call it a night.

Too bad I know I won't get done today. Even if I spend the whole day on it, which I can't. I mean it takes me an hour a %, usually, but I won't be able to sit down and work the whole time. I need breaks. Even if I am in the climax.