I was going to call this an update, but since it's my first post about the topic it's more of an introduction. :-) My writing friend Dixie designed her Writing Rules of Engagement (WRoE acronym, duh) as motivation to keep working on large projects. The very condensed version of the rules: work every day on The Project for a year (or until The Project is completed); set a daily minimum (time or word count); report your progress each month.
So this is my progress report for January. The Project is my 2011 NaNoNovel.
I renamed characters so there weren’t so many with the same starting letters and named the companies that didn't have names yet. [This Agency] and [That Agency] are gone from the text. Then I reformatted the document (wider margins and 1 1/2 spacing) and printed about 20 pages to start. Some editing just goes better for me on hard copy, and paper is easy to carry around. That morning hour before work thing didn’t happen in January, but I took the hard copy with me and worked on my breaks and at lunch. On my days off I tried to spend at least two hours each day working on it. That’s when I typed in the changes from the hard copy and made additional adjustments.
I put in 29 hours for the month, almost my one hour a day goal. This edit pass I’ve been tightening the language, correcting verb tense issues (I tended to wander into present tense during the writing), adding some descriptions and identifying plot holes. I have a list of the plot holes to make it easier for me when I start filling them.
I’m on page 37 (of 118), almost one-third of the way through. The word count was 53150 at the end of November; now it’s 51360.
For February, I’ll keep the goal of 1 hour per day, and add the goal of finishing this edit pass.
So that's it. Now you know how I spend my free time ...
5 comments:
Cone on. Nano finished two months ago - are you polishing every word?
Not yet! ;-)
Here are some examples of what I'm doing:
"She picked up her helmet from under the chair." became "She pulled her helmet from under the chair."
"He left and I made sure the files were saved and sent off to the techies." became "He left. I saved the files and sent copies off to the techies."
That's what I call tightening. And yes, I'll do every line in the novel. Some lines will be fine, some I'll only change a word or two to add specificity, others will be worked over extensively. It takes a lot of time, mostly for the thinking part of it. Gotta keep the character's voice right!
Mmmm, If she is under 25 and it’s a crash helmet, then I suggest it should be ‘she reached her leg under the chair, shoved her boot underneath the visor, pulled the helmet out and raised her leg till she could reach it without bending.’
Thanks, Tim. You've made me realize I don't know how old this character is! I'm thinking late 20's to early 30's because of her experience level at the job she does. It's a motorcycle helmet, yes, but it's summer and I think she's wearing sandals. I visualized her leaning a bit to the side and reaching under the chair to pull it out (she's tall). As always, I need more details!
Well, the helmet from under the chair sentence is gone from the story. She'd left her boots in a friend's car and I finally realized she would have left the helmet there, too ... ah, editing.
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