Tag: editing
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Make time for new work
My main creative work since my book contract has either been editing my manuscript or developing my (approach to) social media. By any commercial measure, that’s what I should have done. Polishing and sharing best honors my creative expression. One has creative intention too, and each success makes one’s ground more fertile. Recently my editor Vivian…
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Merge and purge (writing and language)
My first draft was 220,000 words of symbol-laden passages and over-described locales. Over years I steadily replaced sets of words with smaller stronger ones, refining the language to heighten the story and the emotional viewpoint. The never-quite-articulated goal was for the words to hold more weight relative to their size thanks to their structure. In…
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More Edits
The heck with this, I know — but I am editing the book again. I thought I was done, or done for now. At 138K a little big but, you know, big-boned. It was fine. I could write new stories now, send out queries, sure that some kind agent would understand me. A major contest…
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Deep breath
I think my creative retreat is deeper than I first acknowledged. For professional reasons I want to leap into writing short pieces but I am far from leaping. A novel is a great mecha suit, immense powers but within strict rules. Wearing it so long has left a host of implants and fixators that need…
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Meandering Progress Report Sep 2013
As I wrote a novel with a corporate setting, florid language became dead weight. I needed to make a corporate motif, a slickness half jet-age half cyberpunk. It took many drafts to make that happen since it was a big story. I resolved not to write like film or for film, but to edit my…
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Interleaving
In a marathon session a week ago I interleaved the chapters of the manuscript. As I posted earlier it was Kathryn Johnson’s idea. Until now the points of view alternated in long chapters of 8,000-10,000 words. By alternating individual scenes from these chapters I now change viewpoints every thousand words or so. A few chapters…