I am laughing my a$$ off at myself because in my goal to complete the editing of my ‘ahem’ finished story before I start NaNoWriMo, I sat and read the entire story. I have re-written and re-edited the first ten or so chapter so many times that they are pretty good, what I forgot to do in all that time was look at the rest of it.
I have three different versions of her history in this lifetime and four versions of her history in her past life. She speaks to various deities in this story and everyone of them repeats or has mistakes in them involving her story and their mythology. I have whole chapters that are nothing more than ‘Chapter 27 – write about Vincent here’ which never got done. I even have a whole scene that just stopped in the middle of it and never got finished.
What the hell was I thinking when I kept saying that it was almost done.
I’m not discouraged though, I’m laughing at myself and hitting myself in the head for being so silly.
Ah the joys of editing – seriously thinking I should give it to my kids and see what they come up with, might be better than what I come up with.
So to fix the problems here is a list of things I need to do…
1. Write a short story about her past/present lives.
2. Write a short story about her ‘big bad crime and punishment’
3. Research a bit more on deities in actual books, not Wikipedia, lol.
4. Finish unfinished chapters
5. Edit it from start to finish.
And all of this in two months…I think the silly laughter is getting to my brain now…
So wish me luck, I’m sure there will be other posts about the process and the insanity (trust me this post is much better than the one I was going to do about impatient emailers, lmao)
Laughter is good medicine and even better when you can laugh at yourself.
So here’s a toast to writing, editing and all us crazy writers whose methods make no sense to anyone else!
Oh I know all about editing and rewriting lol! Good luck! I feel you pain.
ReplyDeleteI have the opposite problem to you. writing my draft I got better and more coherent as I went on, and it's my early chapters that need more work.
ReplyDeleteI like your idea about writing short stories to explore your character's history. I did that once in relation to a 10k novelette I'd written and now my "short" background story is 50k, oops.
I'm sure you'll get your head round it. Good luck :)
LOL, have fun Heidi, you'll get there and its good to see that you're thinking ahead. Just don't let the maniac get their way. LOL
ReplyDeleteReally feeling for you here... and I hope you're not a gibbering wreck by the end of this. It's the horrible 80/20 rule again. The first 20% of the work gets you 80% of the finished product; then it takes 80% of the work to polish it up that last 20%. Good luck with that.
ReplyDeleteI love your new blog - congrats!
ReplyDeleteI'm in a tedious editing process right now, more like polishing, and it never gets easier or more fun. The best part is you do get o fall in love with your story again:)
good luck!!!
ReplyDeleteJulie/Firewolf