Old Manuscript Revival: Day 3, Rebuilding

(Old Manuscript Revival - Beginning the editing frenzy) (Old Manuscript Revival: Day One, Diving in for Successful Plot Surgery) 
(Old Manuscript Revival: Day Two, Wielding the proverbial axe)

(Yes, I know how late this is - my schedule seemed to explode in my face over the last week)

Full disclosure: I haven't been able to work on my editing adventure much in the past week, and probably won't get another big chunk of time to again for another week or two. That said, at this point I feel I have done enough to write the conclusion to my revision guide.

Last time I talked to you all, I had just finished slashing through pages and pages of dreaded first draft with a merciless red pen. I cut away all that was not needed, and outlined chapters to fill the gaps. My next step was to take the pile of ashes I had after my demolition spree back to my computer and build it back up into something better.

After I cut out the bits of my manuscript I had deemed useless, I had about 3/4 of my original word count. When talking to other authors, I have heard, for the most part, that they struggle to keep their word count under 100k+ in their first drafts, and they end up pretty much done after they cut out those big chunks as they revise. However, I am not one of those people. When I write a first draft, I tend to create a skeleton that I go back and add substance to. When I wrote EOA, I barely had the need to delete at all, and most of my revision process was adding detail where it was lacking. The old manuscript is a different story. I did not have an outline for it when I first wrote it, so the bare bones ended up deformed. In order to get to the building up stage, I had to first rebuild the foundation.

Now I am essentially in the middle of a massive rewrite to get the old manuscript in working order. Because of other commitments and The Corpus Chronicles Book 2 deadlines (yes, it's going to be here soon!), I probably won't be able to conclude this project for a while. Nonetheless, it is my opinion that the first round of edits on a rough draft should not take more than a week if you have been able to dedicate an adequate amount of time to it. If you have been editing for months and have not sent yet sent off your project to an editor or beta readers, I would advise you to reconsider your motives and think about taking that leap.

Happy word murdering to you all.

Esha

Old Manuscript Revival: Day 2, wielding the proverbial axe

(Old Manuscript Revival: Beginning the editing frenzy)

(Old Manuscript Revival: Day 1, diving in headfirst for successful plot surgery) 

I apologize in advance if this post is a bit lackluster... my brain feels like jello :/

I had to spend almost the entire morning today catching up with my review backlog, so I only got in about a half-day's worth of work. As I was reading through the manuscript, I found myself mercilessly slashing away entire pages of text like a soulless executioner. I probably would drive two-years-ago me to tears if I could talk to her/me then, tossing out months of work in a few minutes.

As I continued through the manuscript, I left myself detailed notes for scenes to add in. I didn't bother cleaning up the little sentence to sentence stuff today as I focused myself on strengthening the plot, developing my characters further, and basically just making everything a whole lot more believable. I starred paragraphs that I need to clean up when I add my edits into my computer, which quickly became almost every chapter. 

Wielding the proverbial axe is a necessary evil every writer needs to learn to embrace. Every time I cut out a line, I feel myself cringe as my already not very long word count dips even lower, and cower in the face of the monstrous rewrite that lurks around the corner. Never hesitate to hit delete (except don't really delete bits - cut and paste them into a discard document in case you need to fish out paragraphs later). If you think you can write something better again, chances are you can. 

I'll be back on the day after tomorrow to write day 3 (I need to take an off day so I don't burn out before the end of this revision marathon).

Well, I'm off to watch trashy TV, sleep, and keep my head out of this story for a little while to recharge my batteries.

-Esha

Old Manuscript Revival: Day 1, Diving in for Successful Plot Surgery

Part one - (Old Manuscript Revival: Beginning the editing frenzy)

When I started my revision process this morning, I spent a good chunk of time staring at the giant stack of two hundred and something pages and felt shivers run down my spine as I waited for it to jump up and bite my hand off. I hadn't looked at the story in two years, and every page was in serious need of TLC. But, with a mug of herbal tea and red pen in hand, I set off into the smoldering abyss of first drafts.

I started out by digging an old notebook hat has all my notes in it from when I first wrote the manuscript out of the bottom of a cardboard box. After a quick flip through, I started on a fresh page and made a table that looked something like this:

Plot Problems |  How to Fix

___________________________

   

I listed out a good dozen and figured out solutions. I had to rework my main character - I altered her backstory slightly and changed both her age and race. 

The biggest problem I saw was the beginning. The problem was that I thought of new plot twists as I wrote, and because of this, the beginning was littered with segments that contradicted ideas established later on. The first three chapters were by far the worst, so I chopped them off and spent most of the day rewriting them. 

After that, the minor problems became a lot less frequent, so I went ahead and began a line edit, fixing the problems as they appeared. I was a novice when I wrote the manuscript, and it shows in every sentence. I tried to use humor to defuse the tension in emotionally charged scenes. If I were writing it now, I would let the feelings stew with some heavier prose before moving on to a new topic. Also, I wrote my main character extremely cocky and did not make her emotions believable, so now I have to hack away at useless paragraphs and adding in more of her inner monologue.  

I learned a lot from my more recent projects, especially through my publication process of EOA, so now I face the challenge of incorporating everything I learned into my old work. I already love the plot. Now I have to transform the writing into something I'm proud of.

Over and out. 

Old Manuscript Revival - Beginning the editing frenzy

Lately, I've hit a stonewall while writing The Corpus Chronicles book 2. I've spent almost two weeks working on the same chapter, when I usually knock out one/two on a good writing day. It is an exceptionally long, intense chapter, so I knew going in it wouldn't be easy. I expected it to be slow. However, I didn't realize the mindset it would leave me in. Now that I'm coming up on week three with only 3k words written, I'm finding myself dreading my writing time and doing anything to avoid it. I've done laundry far to many times, taken much longer than I should have to make myself lunches, and spent countless extra hours marketing EOA. But by far, most of my time has been sucked away staring at my computer screen, reading through what I've already written over and over again.

After another day of brain-numbing staring, I decided that what I need is a break from The Corpus Chronicles. I love the series, but it has held me hostage since last fall, and I've realized that it is time for me to change things up a bit. I thought about starting a new project, but once I get going with a project, it is extremely hard for me to stop (which is why The Corpus Chronicles has taken over my life), and I do have to get back to book 2 eventually. When deciding what to do, I remembered that through the last few days, I found my mind drifting back to an old manuscript I wrote about two years ago and shelved. If you are a frequent reader of my blog, I wrote about an old laptop that was stolen - this manuscript's fresh new shiny revised draft was on that computer and all I had on my backup drive was a monstrous rough version. A few minutes ago, I printed off that rusty old thing.

It doesn't look so scary there, but I assure you it is. As my new pet project/Corpus Chronicles vacation, I'm planning on reviving it over the next few days to get into publishing order (once I get there, I'll decide whether or not to publish it... first things first). I'm going to write a blog post for each revision day to show the process and to keep me on track. 

We'll see what happens together. Fingers crossed.

-Esha

Editors, proofreading, and why I'm extremely frustrated right now

Ok, so I had gone through my gazillion and one drafts and finally got EOA to the point where I was ready for professional editorial services. Then I found an editor who had great testimonials and reasonable prices. She helped me beef up my content significantly and then did the final proofread. After that, I skimmed through it one more time but didn't do another in-depth edit. This was a mistake. Today my mom was finally reading the book and she sends me about fifteen texts with little mistakes she found, like mixing up 'there', 'their', and 'they're'. Trust me, I know which 'there' I'm supposed to use, but writing late into the nights fueled up on caffeine does a number to the little brain cells, and mistakes always happen. I paid my editor and trusted her to find/correct them. She didn't get it all.
Now I'm upset with my editor, but this is also partly my fault. I guess the reason I didn't do another in-depth edit was, first, because I had just gone through professional editorial services, second, because of excitement :3, and lastly, the thing I always hear people say: there's always something you see that you're going to want to change and at some point you just have to tell yourself that it is finished.
So where does reasonable editing end and overanalyzing begin? I think the best way to know is to go with your gut. If your gut says to do another read-through, do it. My gut said to, but I thought I was being paranoid, and now I'm sweeping up the mess, contacting reviewers and begging them to look at the new draft and not the old, and dealing with the embarrassment of my print book looking sloppy and unprofessional.
My new version of EOA is going to be online in about 48 hours. I hope not too many people noticed the mistakes, or that they just seem like a bigger deal to me than to everyone else. But it is what it is now. Lesson learned. Don't make my mistake.
-Esha