It's Good to Talk

The edit/rewrite continues. I'm loving adding to my word count in the side bar each day. Over 14,000 words edited so far. And I'm actually really enjoying it. The lovely Anna Chilvers author of the splendid Falling Through Clouds told me I would and I should have just believed her - thanks Anna.

Had a particularly chewy scene to deal with today. On the original draft I had scrawled 'what is this scene trying to do?' across it. After reading this post on Calistro's blog and doing some big doodling with a sparkly purple pen borrowed from the daughter's pencil case I found the answer. Then I looked at the scene. It wasn't doing it. The characters were there, Id set the scene but 'it' wasn't happening.

What to do?

I was so mired in the original scene that I found it really difficult to imagine rewriting it even though I knew it had to be done. Then I remembered an exercise we did recently at my Stephen May writing class. I got a blank piece of paper and a non-sparkly pen (optional) and wrote the scene completely as dialogue. I didn't worry about style or precision. I just let the characters chat, pretty much as I thought they would do in real life. Their conversation veered off in various directions but in the end after pages and pages of chinwagging and confabulation I knew that in amongst it all I had managed to tell 'it'.

It took me the rest of the day to edit it down, getting rid of lots of the dialogue in the process, especially the 'Well yeahs' and 'What do you means?' and the bit when they started discussing house prices in York (?!). Then I put back in all the description and action bits.

The scene is now so much better. There is a point to it. The reader learns more about the characters and their desires and fears. It moves the story on. It has a beginning, a middle and an end - yay!

A sigh of relief and a new technique learned. I imagine it won't be the last time I will be using it. 66,000 words to go.

Faffing and footling (ahem I mean editing, of course)

Hmm cold pizza for breakfast. An odd start to the day. But it was in the fridge when I was fetching milk for my cereal, and so I ate it. Just realised it was supposed to be my lunch, but I suppose I could always have coco pops instead.

Still twiddling with my novel while awaiting a request for a full ms / compliments slip saying ‘No Thanks’(delete as appropriate / most likely)

Have discovered a couple more glaring inconsistencies - a house by the sea in ch 2 is ten miles from the beach in ch. 16. An intriguing subplot involving an old recipe book raised in ch.3 is never mentioned again. Oh and a boy called Sam becomes Adam. How could I have not spotted these before? Anyway, they are righted now. I have also done a find and replaced of ‘giggle’ after my reader (Hubby) said he didn’t see my MC as the giggling sort, (more of a chortler with a couple of hearty guffaws perhaps),
yet she was constantly doing it.

Will there ever come a point when I’m done fiddling? Even if and when I send off a full manuscript to an agent I imagine I will continue faffing and footling in anticipation of their response. In the end think I will need a big lockable box to put it away in so I can leave it be for a while and start on novel #2

Editing like a reader who wants to be a writer

Gosh this editing lark is hard work. I especially don't like it when I get to a paragraph that I have circled in red, with the words 'completely rewrite' in the margin. Not particularly helpful. I am feeling inspired however by Reading like a Writer by Francine Prose. She encourages you to read one word at a time, to appreciate the effort that has gone into choosing the right word. I am trying to apply this to my editing, which is possibly why it's taking me so bloomin' long.

What am I editing at this stage? (well I'm trying to reduce the number of times my heroine throws questions into the air for one.) I'm working on the first three chapters of my novel ,as yet untitled but with a crappy working title that I shall reduce for blogging purposes to omg. They are drafted but need to be seriously edited before I submit them to My Man for an early critique. I just want him to give me the answers to a few basic questions such as 'Does this make any sense at all? Have you got a clue what is going on? Have I lit the fuse yet? Have you already sussed the how, what and when of the 'bomb'? Is she still asking too many questions? Is this a really bad idea?

I want him to be totally honest (while bearing mind that I have PMT, a rotten cold and another 14 days to go before I can have a drink). Is this a worse idea than asking your partner to teach you to drive?