Rhyme Time
Since my last post, I've put in almost 11 more hours of editing. Of those 11 hours, about 4 and a half of them were devoted to a single task: composing a rhyming poem of 16 stanzas to replace three paragraphs of exposition. It came out of nowhere; before I knew it, I had replaced "do you know the legend?" with "have you heard the rhyme?" and I felt I had to carry on. I had already intended to rewrite the prophecies to become rhyming couplets, so I suppose something like this was unavoidable. Throughout, several websites have been extremely helpful: RhymeZone, How Many Syllables, and Thesaurus.com in particular, as well as some of my online friends.
As it stands at the moment, I've completed the first pass of revision for chapters 1, 2, 5, 6, and 8 through 11; chapters 3, 4, and 7 remain to be written. I've always tried to go in a linear manner before, but that never worked. I find skipping around, working on one part here and another there to be much easier -- and much more productive.
And We’re Off!
After a slow re-start I finally got going today. I've been keeping track of how much time I spend working on the manuscript. Between June 1st and yesterday I put in approximately 5 and a quarter hours. I feel that I've done most of the big cutting and re-arranging that is needed, though there's still some later parts I'm iffy about leaving in. Now it's time to go through to fill in the holes and really flesh things out.
When I started I thought I would do everything 'by hand' as it were, just a printed copy, some pens and highlighters, and a Word document. I decided I needed a little more structure so I imported everything into yWriter5 and spent about 3 hours figuring out how to use the program and getting everything set up. After reading through the Chapters - Another way page of the wiki I decided to do something like that, dividing the scenes up into related sections and only moving them into chapter order when I'd finished. This makes it much easier to see which parts need more attention -- for instance, the "Rebellion" section is sadly empty as those chapters were never part of the original draft.
All told, I've put in a solid 5 and a half hours of writing and revision today, which is more time than the month so far combined. Obviously I've started doing something right.
Back Into the Swing
I finally got over the hurdles of May in time to try starting again on the first of June. I found a new job as a waitress and I'm having more fun with it than I would have thought, considering I really didn't want to work in food service. A job is a job, though.
Between last night and today I've clocked about three and a quarter hours of solid editing, playing around with my first draft and trying to make things work. One of the biggest issues I'd been struggling with -- the FMC's goals and motivations -- finally resolved itself today with only a slight bit of tweaking. First, I had to re-write the bits where she she was looking for the spirit of a centuries-old ghost and instead make her look for the antidote to a certain poison from a legend. Second, I re-wrote the bits where she couldn't remember the prophecies that the spirits spoke through her so that she did remember them. Her goal, now, is to seek this antidote in order to fulfill one of the prophecies and wake up the fifth prince and his brothers in order to get their help (which is the main plot point leading into the second half of the book). The pieces were there; I just needed to rearrange them and tweak them until they fell into place.
Of course, this means I need to go through the whole book with a fine-toothed comb and edit or eliminate any and all references to things which have been changed, which is a feat in and of itself. But it's still minor compared to the victory I made fitting the puzzle pieces together. And the whole time, my pile of discarded or re-written chapters/scenes is growing bigger!
Just when you think it’s going well
The same thing seems to happen every time: you're doing great, you're on a roll... and then life happens. In this case, my student loan payment for May. I've been trying to get a job for the last couple weeks; I've applied to probably 6 or 7 places now, and I haven't heard anything back from any of them. Fortunately, May's backup funding plan is the kind of money-making I absolutely love: getting money for my shit, a.k.a. GARAGE SALE!
Fortunately I didn't inherit the hoarder gene from my mom's side. I love getting rid of stuff! And I like getting money for doing it, too. Most of the stuff for the sale is already packed, so for the next two weeks I'm working on the other half: making crafts to sell. Whatever I make that doesn't get sold at the garage sale will get put in my Etsy shop afterwards. I also spent Monday and today out at my grandma's house digging up raspberry and blackberry plants to sell. It's the only thing I've gotten her to part with so far (that hoarder gene!).
What all this means, of course, is that I haven't touched TWFDD since the day after my last post. I did do some brainstorming here and there, though, and made even more notes for things that need to be removed or rewritten. I've changed my plan a bit to reflect all this. During the second half of the month, after the garage sale which is on the 14th, I'll work on the major cuts and revisions. Then when June comes around I can go back and start writing the big, new bits.
The Chopping Block
As I said I would, I finished my first read-through yesterday. Fortunately, most of the second half is what I consider keeper material.
Today, I took the first couple of chapters to the butcher's. On the whole, it was a lot easier than expected. I found lots of things I could recycle into new scenes, so a lot of what was rewritten/added was old stuff in new places and not much new material. I've got notes where there needs to be big, brand-new insertions.
Here's a bit of a breakdown of what happened on the chopping block:
- Chapter 1&2 are mostly untouched (for now...).
- Chapter 3 is now Chapter 8. The new Chapter 3 will be a brand-new addition.
- Chapter 4 is gone completely, bye-bye, see you never. The new Chapter 4 will be a much-expanded version of the last 2-3 paragraphs of Chapter 2.
- Chapter 5 was chopped in half and the second part was fused with the first part of Chapter 6, along with some additions/rewriting.
- Chapter 6 got a total makeover and a new Chapter 7 (still to be written) was added after it.
- Chapter 8, as I said, used to be Chapter 3 but got pushed back.
This brings me up to Chapter 9 (previously Chapter 7 -- I got rid of one chapter and added three new ones). Obviously there's still a lot of things that need to be changed, but at least I feel like I'm finally making progress. And that's the most important part.
Tomorrow I hope to continue this process, and to have everything moved around and cut by the end of the week. By the beginning of May I'd like to start writing the new chapters, and after they're completed I'll do the second read-through. I'll print out the new and heavily-revised chapters out to add to the pile for the second read-through. I kept a lot of old stuff, so there's still timelines and geography to correct, as well as so I can catch any inconsistencies that may have cropped up.
Let's see if I can stay on track with this plan!
Beginning the Revision Journey
After much going back and forth about exactly which novel I was going to revise first, my mom finally intervened and rolled a die.
The Wind From Del Damos (henceforth referred to as TWFDD) came up the winner. This novel was written in the summer of 2007 for a NaNoWriMo spin-off event, and is the fifth novel I've written. The first, rough draft is right about 60,000 words.
Out the 6 novels I'd picked as candidates for revision, TWFDD was the one I felt needed the least work plot-wise. Yes, there's a lot of plot I've planned to add, but not a whole lot in the rough draft that really needs changed. It's not full of dare filler like my first NaNo novel Daydreamer. The kicker, though, is that quite a lot of the FMC's speech requires inventing a conlang, as there's several sections where there's no one around who speaks it or the section is from the point of view of a character who doesn't speak it. In the first run-though, I've been trying to identify and cut down on these parts so it's less confusing to the reader and I don't have to focus on inventing a new language so much.
I've done a couple read-throughs prior to this, so I already have a few notes on inconsistencies and other things that need fixed. A big one was the geography; I decided to scrap the map I'd started with and draw up something completely new, which also requires changing lots of geographical references and traveling time in the text.
In my first read-through yesterday, this is primarily what I focused on: time, geography, and refining the plot to reflect both of these. Turns out that means chapters 5 and 6 will have to fused and completely re-written in to put two characters in different places, instead of the same place. I've decided to get rid of a lot of the political/war/strategy scenes simply because this is a YA novel (and I really can't write them). Instead, I've got several whole chapters to add focusing on previously one-off characters and their rebellion. Of course, there's timeline issues with that as well, and other plot holes that need resolved or just plain eliminated -- such as the mysterious man who's a spy for the general of the advancing army, and just exactly how deep the Baron's machinations run.
I only got about halfway through -- to the point where one of the MMCs decides he's useless and needs to go home, which is going to be cut completely -- and I intend to read through the rest of it today and finish my initial note-taking. This read-through is just a skim to catch the big things. After I'm done with that I'll likely read through it again, taking my time and using a notebook to cross-reference so I can get all my times and geography right before I start actually changing anything.
I'll let you know how it goes!