Well HELLO there. Remember when I used to blog on this website? Yeah, me neither. Self deprecating comments aside, I’m officially one week into NaNoEdiMo or, for those of you who haven’t watched my most recent video (shame), National Novel EDITING Month, my version of NaNoWRIMo, National Novel WRITING Month. Because in between my writing fiction class (which I’ll talk about in a second), my playwriting class, and my growing collection of already written novels it just didn’t seem feasible to try and write ANOTHER one, I’ve decided to spend November editing Eugenia.
Eugenia, if you remember, was that book that I posted segments of over the course of a year on this here website. Since the draft that still exists on BOW, I’ve edited it a lot, but it’s still not at a point where I can feel good about it. The first half of my writing fiction class we spent reading this book about crafting stories through characterization, setting, etc, and while learning about that stuff I was scribbling down edit ideas for Eugenia. Example: In order to characterize Decklan (the main love interest) better, I added in a quirk where he tears things he’s holding when he gets stressed, and in an effort not to destroy important things on accident, he carries around packs of index cards.
Other example: I’m really bad at settings, because I’m always more focused on dialogue and characters, so basically everywhere said dialogue and characters exist in the book is a giant white room. One such location is the house Meg (the protagonist) and Gruber (the guy who rescues her/ shows her the ropes of living off the grid) share for a couple years. All you know is that it’s a part of an abandoned suburb and has a big vegetable garden in the back. And I didn’t add EITHER of those things until about three months ago. In fact, in the draft still on this website, all you know about where Meg spends a pivotal three years of her life is “We managed to keep a semi-permanent home, near where old-world San Diego had been, but food was always a concern.” Also there’s a lake nearby. GREAT.
And so on. Fact is, as proud as I was about Eugenia when I first finished it, and when I made the first several rounds of edits, it’s not where it should be if I ever want to get it published, or even get it considered. I’ve sectioned out the edits I know I want to make so that each day I have a new one. When you’re WRITING a novel in a month, you generally want to write 1667 words a day for a consistent pace. Turns out, when you apply the same idea to editing, it’s a whole lot more complicated. For instance, the edit regarding Decklan’s paper-tearing quirk was scheduled to be done on Sunday. However, this edit required me to basically reread the entire book and add in the quirk where it seemed to fit, which was a lot of places, incidentally. Eugenia is 59,000 words right now, which is A LOT OF WORDS to go through in one day. I also have the bad habit of editing other things as I go, so it takes twice as long.
Point is, I didn’t finish that particular edit until today, when I spent three hours at a local bakery/cafe working on it. Luckily, today’s sectioned-out edit only required two paragraphs and a couple tweaked details. It’s all very complicated.
So that’s going… as well as it could be, all things considered. At least I’m working. Actually, I finished editing Eugenia today at about 2 hours and 15 minutes, yet I stayed at the cafe for another 45, because I was also working on my short story assignment for writing fiction. We’re supposed to be writing a 12-20 page double-spaced short story by the end of the semester. I’ve been writing random scenes from my story all semester, in conjunction with shorter writing assignments we’ve been turning in. Now that we’re actually working on the full story, I started editing and compiling all the different documents/scenes with my story in them. As it stands right now, the first part of my story is 20 pages. Already. And that’s barely a quarter of the story. Apparently, my brain thought it would be a good idea to start a new novel. I’ll let you know how that works out.
In other news, new Things and Stuff episode this Thursday. Once I’m not spending over 3 hours a day doing writing for other classes, I’ll start blogging again. I promise. Things are just kind of stressful and crazy right now. Fun, but stressful and crazy. BYE!
Great update! Thanks. I’m excited that your classes are translating to your past work, and you are applying what you are learning. For your fiction class, maybe you need to put the story you have turned into a novel aside, and knock out a shorter, focused story for the class. Just a thought. Keep up the good work! I’m glad you are hanging at Maggie’s!