The AW Editing Month Extravaganza

Sage said:

I knocked out a full 10% today, which would be a positive sign for my speed if I hadn't cut out the biggest chunk of anything I plan to cut in that section. A good half of today's percentage came from that cut. But I have to go by the Kindle %, or else I have no way to keep track.

Click to expand...

A percent is a percent?

Lost three days to a robotics competition. Awesome, but not much help in getting editing accomplished...

I'm not feeling very good on making my deadline of the 15th. I'm up to 160 pages of edits on paper, but the rewrites are piling up. I knew I'd have to add, but the adds are becoming a giant stack. Those, after they are written up, will end up part of the next edit. Wash. Rinse. Repeat...

What do you think? Go back and make the changes I've written up or slog through this edit, and then make all the changes at once? I generally prefer to accomplish one task before going on to the next, but maybe a first-half that's edited is enough to get the ball rolling on the Beta Swap, and then going on with the edits... I don't know.

I do better with deadlines, but I'm at the part where I need to start changing the plan to have something ready for the date.

Sage said:

Except when it's not

Click to expand...

well, yes... but still!

mrsmig said:

I had the day off, and even though part of it was spent worrying over my mother's surgery (she's 93, but came through it like a champ, thank God), I was still able to edit out just over 371 words in my MS. That means I've cut about 2770 words. I'm a little more than halfway through and am now worrying that I'm going to have to go back in after I'm finished to cut major hunks out. Arrrrr...

Click to expand...

Glad your mom is doing well!

I've been reminding myself of the "going back for another round" possibility whenever I put something off instead of sorting it now, but there seems to be a lot of it happening anyway.

Did another 20 pages before bed, but I regretted it. Had to be up this morning at 3:30, and 20 pages hardly feels worth it at the moment. In addition, I left the folder at home this morning, so no working on it before going home after work.

About 80 pages left to mark up, and then let the changes begin. The little stuff isn't so bad, but the big sections of re/writes concern me...

OMG HOW DID I MISS THIS THREAD

It's exactly what I needed. I'm the worst at editing, the more motivatino I can get towards it, the better. Also, if you guys have any editing methods you've blogged about or blogs you like, throw 'em my way. Right now I make a scene outline, a list of changes, then just rewrite everything... still looking for the best method.

Do you all find tracking hours to be the best way to do it? I usually track my percentage done of each "pass" -- tracking hours is genius! I never thought of it.

My March goals:

1) Finish scene outline of BROKEN THINGS
2) Rough out missing pieces of scenes
3) Finish present tense rewrite
3) Prepare to start reading through it again to do a proper, full rewrite...
4) Total 50 hours of editing, of any kind
5) Don't get distracted editing other stuff.

Managed to power through the bulk of my scene outline yesterday. THINGS ARE COMING TOGETHER yeessssss. *gleeful laugh*

Things are also... not quite fitting... but shush, subconscious, we'll think on those issues another time.

Sage said:

BTW, I wrote this novel in a month. You wouldn't think that it would be hard to rewrite 80% of it in the same amount of time.

Click to expand...

THIS. SO MUCH THIS.

My drafts take two or three months, but editing takes months and months and months and month. YEARS, sometimes.

mrsmig said:

Welcome, EMaree (I've always loved your screen name; I like to say it out loud ).

Only a measly 140 words today. Housework was screaming for attention, and for once I listened.

Click to expand...

Omg, I'm so happy you noticed that about my screenname! I picked it because it was just fun to say.

Thank you for the welcome, mrsmig and Sage.

EMaree said:

Managed to power through the bulk of my scene outline yesterday. THINGS ARE COMING TOGETHER yeessssss. *gleeful laugh*

Things are also... not quite fitting... but shush, subconscious, we'll think on those issues another time.

Click to expand...

I am so with you on that second part, and happy for your luck with the first!

My laughs have come from rereading the paper notes. On read through, I have a scene actually had my MC ignoring advice simply to fall down a flight of stairs. In reality, she had something to do that was never explained in the scene, but good grief. I'm well into "laugh so I don't cry" town.

Finally finished corrections on paper. I don't want to total up the sheer volume of pages simply marked as "rewrite" but it's likely in the 30s. Six scenes need to be fully added (less than it looked at other point, thanks to moving things.)

Thank goodness for Scrivener, I haven't torn my hair out yet. Sadly, all the adds sound weird and stilted right now, but hopefully I'll fall into step. Let the rewriting commence!

I'd really like to put it a nicer way, but I sort of gave up all hopes of cramming all the work I wanted to do into 15 days.

I've got a decent 750 words from each story (yeah, it was going to be one story, and now it's back to both of them...) for the beta swap. The scope of all the edits for the one I wanted to submit is large, so at least I've bought myself a bit more time? It's nice to feel like I've accomplished something, even if it's a departure from my actual goal.

Surprise upside to today, I did a query for the second book that is better than the millionth version of the other book's query. I don't think that says anything about the book other than that it has an easier to explain main plot, but it was nice after how badly I've struggled with queries...