Back from a trip

There's one rule I follow in blogging is that I never divulge a trip I'm planning, and I never divulge that I'm on a trip. I only report a trips after the fact.

I just got back from accompanying a friend to have surgery from a specialist out of state. I spent four full days--and two partial days going and coming--in beautiful Bangor, Maine; where the temperature and wind were inhu-Maine. There was a fifty degree difference between St. Louis and Bangor, a forty-miles per hour wind difference. Last but not least, there was two feet of snow on the ground, and another inch or two fell the day before spring. The wind-chill was sadistic.

I also defeated The Blob bare-handed, but that's a different story.

Editing vs Writing

I'm now learning a lot about editing. It's a distinct skill from writing. Here's how editing's different from writing, in my experience:

I can't really schedule or predict writing fiction. I might sit for nine hours, produce no worthwhile text, go to bed, wake up and write a thousand usable words in an hour that then take little or no rewriting.

Editing is different. Doing it is like a 9-5 job. I can pretty much tell how much I'm going to "process" over what period of time. This first stage is going to take 6 hours a chapter, by the rate I'm going. I'll maybe get faster with practice. I could also, productively, work overtime, which I've been doing.

Writing surprises you sometimes. With editing, though, there's more rote work. I can't call it boring, I have to make a lot of decisions, but setting it up so I can make the best decisions takes most the time.

My deadline in October seems pretty tight right now.

New stage

It's not that I've had nothing to say recently; it's that I couldn't find time to say it that wouldn't take time from my novel. Plus, I was in the hospital for food poisoning, and then infectious colitis. I seem to be over it without any continuing aftereffects.

The big news is I've started to edit manuscript, a massive job. I have to turn it in to my writers' group for overall review in October. I plan to have all the problems I could find (as well as the ones they found) corrected. The first step is to just read through it and number every scene with OpenOffice comments. That prepares it to be rearranged and outlined, doing the larger rearrangements first, and then the fine adjustments within the scenes.

I'm actually not quite done writing the draft. However, I have an October deadline. If I read less at my writers' group every week and instead focus on the editing, I can get this done. 

I started the novel, a piece of fan fiction, in 2009 not knowing the difference between a plot point and color. Boy, does this draft have a lot of color. My perception is that much can go.

My muse and I must sit down and have a talk. I'll never write another novel the way I wrote this one. Not that I would have ever wanted to do this one differently. I learned a lot. Trial and error is great for learning as long as you have people who can point out your errors. I don't know what would have became of this project if I didn't find a writers' group, and probably the best one in the Midwest.

Plus, I discovered and honed a writers' work ethic. I can't say how much I'm looking forward to editing this piece. I took the best route in creating this novel, but I don't have enough left in my life to take it again.

I find my eyes are about to cross from sleepiness. I've got to cut this out.