Wow, That Was a Month.

So this is good, instead of once a week I seem to be keeping very nicely with a monthly posting rate.

Oy.

I finally started editing again, life and being generally in a funk having kept me from it almost completely. This week has been good, though. I'm almost done with part two, and I seem to have different opinions on things than I did while anticipating problems, which is both good and bad. Good because some things don't need to be cut or completely rearranged as I had thought, but bad in that I need to add a lot, especially to part two. I also have found myself thinking things like this:

(Photo: actual note on the manuscript that I found minutes ago)

One habit I've discovered is that of making half-baked characters. Especially with fantasy stories, the cast of characters can become overwhelmingly large, and I'm not that experienced with handling that kind of responsibility. Apparently I can kill hundreds at a time, but God forbid I actually develop a minor character past a name and vague profession.

So I have a lot of that kind of thing to fix.

This weekend I'm going larping again- one of the few activities I've kept up with this summer and is keeping me relatively sane.

Or at least, as sane as someone can be when they rely on larping for a sense of normality.

So I won't be getting any editing done tomorrow through Sunday, but there are people at the event I'm going to ask about some things. I know of others who write, and certainly most everyone there is familiar with fantasy writing. (Seriously, so many there are such amazing storytellers.)

Hope everyone is having a good summer so far!
Have a safe Fourth of July!

First Edits Done

It's done. I've gotten through the whole manuscript. Wow, that's pretty cool.

So the first edit is done, which is awesome, and I feel like I fixed a lot of the writing. Now I know what major problems need to be fixed, and for the second edits I can go back and do the major cutting and pasting and touching up logistical problems and anomalies.

But first I'm going to take a small vacation. My spring break is next week, so I'll spend that time to do some more editing research, relax, and maybe get some work done on other projects. I haven't written any short things really, I think I'll try and get a few written to get back into writing, instead of just editing. I might even look at my failed NaNo attempt and see if it's worth salvaging.

I'm also going to be working on my art portfolio again, so I'll probably do some more sketches for y'all as I do that. What kind of images are you guys curious about? I'm thinking of doing some more landscape and architecture sketches, I do so few of those.

I do have one sketch to post now- I redid an interior sketch I drew a long time ago. I've fixed a lot of discrepancies and will try and restart that digital painting of it I wanted to do.

So there's that. Wow, I can't believe that last half went so quickly. Kind of makes me scared to go back and see why the beginning gave me such trouble; I doubt I fixed it all up.

I've got a lot of schoolwork to get done now that I can't use my manuscript to procrastinate, so... I guess I'll see you all in two weeks!

Finally Intensity

I started my daily editing around nine thirty this evening... Or technically last night, since I got super carried away and it's now twelve forty-five AM. Oops? But I just edited a very exciting bit- a bit including my first fight scene of the book.

I think my timing was well done during the first fight scene, and I remember being very careful to line everything up. I'm still finding mistakes of course, and with fast-pace scenes it's harder to make action ownership clear, so I'm working on that.

Otherwise I'm very happy with this- the action has started, it isn't horrible, and I'm working with newer writing as well as characters that I dearly missed that were not in the first half of the book. I don't know if I should worry about this, but I seem to have introduced a whole new cast of characters for the second half of the story, mostly due to relocation. Would that ruin continuity or all the work I've put into developing other characters? All characters reappear by the end of the book, they're not gone forever, of course, but I don't know if that's something that sits well with readers. Anyone have any advice regarding that?

This past week I missed a lot of days for editing due to my life being for a brief period of time CHAOS ITSELF, but especially regarding my binge tonight, I think I'm still on track. Not that I really have a track, other than just constant progress. Because I'm obviously a very organized person(NOT). I love having these random three to five hour spans of productivity. It's like my brain decided to cooperate unconditionally this once.

I had to stop and post this because I need to go to bed/do more homework before I go to bed because I promised myself I would. My Humanities class is reading Macbeth this week- one of the only Shakespeare plays to have a well rounded female character. So I'm excited- I've read it before but the class is being taught by the drama professor who's directing Macbeth this semester (a happy coincidence) and it's going to be an interesting next couple weeks going through it. Swords have already made one appearance in the classroom (like, real ones).

Page: 258/415

Problems I'm Thinking About:
-logistical consistency
-character development
-messy writing and being too wordy(one of my main problems. It's horrific, really.)
-Pacing, especially regarding action and suspense for emotional scenes.
-not letting this part of the story drag, especially for the next few chapters.

Part One Down. Next Up: The Fluff.

I've gotten through Part One! Yay!

Elle is changing locations now and she's going to what actually might be my favorite place in the story, the mountain nation. It's modeled after seventeenth century France in a lot of ways, and is full of extravagant characters and situations and I'm very excited to read this for the first time.

It's been almost exactly a year since I've seen these pages.

This whole mid-plot excursion to the mountains is also where I'm going to have to make a big choice regarding cuts, I may in fact decide to cut the entire thing and here's why I think that:

It doesn't do much to further the main plot of the story. It serves to inform Elle and the reader of the larger world and a lot of political relationships that come into play throughout this story and later ones, but nothing I think I couldn't do just keeping her at home or something less involved.

I get a bit self-indulgent, and this is definitely a product of that. What I remember about this part was making pretty designs for fun characters and settings, which I have a weakness for. I also was trying to be a bit art-y and I don't know if that really serves my purpose well. It's a lot of worldbuilding, again, but maybe not entirely necessary to this story.

It gets really long, and might be too long and boring. Again, I think I was pretty self-indulgent with this and the pretty pictures. I've been warned often of having a slow middle to the story and while this may be pretty it might slow it down. It's also a large chunk of my manuscript and cutting it out might make it a more navigable/marketable/otherwise more appealing and thinner hunk of paper. We shall see.

These are all my preliminary worries about this particular segment of my manuscript. Of course I haven't seen it in a year so we'll see if my opinion of it changes as I read. How do you all feel about scenes or entire chapters whose primary goal is world-building? Are they laborious and boring? Or do they add dimension and context to the main plot? I'd like your opinions, because I'm not sure of my own.

But tonight I rejoice! And bring out another blog post. I just went back into my Word document and found my place, so I have a page number for you.

Page: 133/415

Problems I'm Thinking About (besides what I just outlined in the body of the post)
-I'm still focusing on character development and consistency
-and of course fixing the immature writing.
-I read something today about each chapter having a certain level of suspense, and will have to keep an eye on keeping it interesting. I don't have enough distance right now though, that will have to be a next-edit thing where I read through the whole thing before editing instead of editing as I go like I am now.

Return

Hello All, feels like it's been a while, hasn't it?

Well that's my bad. And I haven't touched my manuscript in all that time, either. Shame on me. But I will reconvene to begin again this exact morning, I swear- once I post this (and then do the obligatory read-through to catch all my grammar mistakes) I will close down my internet and start once again at page fifty-two of my manuscript.

I hope I took long enough of a break for that raw spot in my brain to heal. Editing this is like scrubbing as hard as I can with sand paper at this large glob of hardened gloop I've spawned, trying to make it change shape into something recognizable. It was really wearing on me, but let's hope I can handle it this time around.

I realize now I rushed things, taking only that measly week off after finishing the draft, and I did know that at the time, but it was all in vain since there was no way I could've gotten through editing by graduation.

I have almost the entire summer left now... I will put it to good use, though I resolve to take it slow and steady this time around. No pressure.

HOWEVER: I do want to participate in NaNoWriMo this fall. So if I could have it done by then... Haha, stop it Leigh.

On that note- July is apparently another Camp NaNoWriMo month, sorry I should have posted as soon as I found out (the day before, as always) but.... I didn't.

I want to do the November run though, like a lot. I can't wait to go to College and everything, and I would be participating along with both new and old classmates, so I feel like it would be a great experience.

I chose my classes for fall term yesterday. It's so real. I'll be taking a Humanities/Writing course, Differential Calculus With Review (blaarcgh kill me), Spanish, and Introduction to Drawing. I CANNOT wait. I think I know who will be teaching the drawing class and I already met him, so I'm that much more excited. "Introduction" to Drawing though, is a funny name. Drawing and I, WE'VE MET.

So there's the rundown on what's going on with what. Not posting Editing concerns this time because they haven't changed since I've been doing nothing.

P.S. I've just now gone back and looked at one of my favorite blogs re{d}ress or http://reddressredress.blogspot.com/ and reread her own post about editing troubles. She's making a film, and it's comforting to know even she has some of my same problems, albeit in a different way.

Bumps

So I haven't made much progress in the past... two weeks?

It's pretty bad. I've had a lot going on, which is part of it... with graduation and all, but the main reason is that as I've been editing the crappiness is impossible to get through. Speaking with my advisors (people on the internet) I've come to the conclusion that I should probably take a short break from it. This solution has the added bonus of not making me feel as bad about slacking off the past week.

So sorry about not having anything good to update.

...I cleaned my room today.

General Suckage

I've been struggling with this on and off whenever I've sat down to edit, but it really got me today.

My writing sucks.

I know, according to just about every writer from whom I've sought counsel, this is a normal thing. But I've never been one to hate on my own work, not even my own paintings or drawings, while I've seen other artists go to pieces over their own in disdain.

So this is new to me- and when I sat down to edit today I got stuck in the gut with it, and just how bad I think my writing is.

I can fix it, yes, but right now it's an uphill battle and there's just SO MUCH bad writing and it's going to take me forever... And I just want to get to the more recently written parts already because hopefully those will be much better.

It's one of my great fears that I'll finish this, edit it and everything, even get it published, and then look back at it in a year or two and think it's horrible. After all that work, yes I would have so much knowledge gained from it, but I'd still be ashamed. I can't handle being ashamed of my own work, especially something like this that I love so much.

So back to editing now. It's So Bad. Gah. Pray for me, Lord give me strength.

Oh- on a procrastination note, while I was avoiding facing this monstrosity head-on I was looking through famous quotes and saw AGAIN the Twain quote about replacing every "very" with "damn" so the editors will take it out, so I replaced every "very" with the f-word in my own document via the "find" tool so I'll catch all of them as I go. Because I'm not using any curse words in this story, so it'll be striking. Now I can't wait to find one and fix it, so I have something to look forward to.

Problems I'm Thinking About:
-general suckage
-character consistency
-what is the title going to be??
-mastering the use of dialogue
-well-rounded character stories

An End

I've been finding it hard to concentrate on editing as my high school tenure comes to an end. Not just the schoolwork that is again being thrown at me last minute, but this whole transition into being a graduate. I'm already preparing for college in the fall, getting things for my dorm room, choosing my roommate (hey M!) and I have to take placement tests this week... It's a lot.

Editing is still going very very slowly, though I did do some this weekend. I hope my workload for the next weeks will be lighter and I can get more sleep as well. It's not helped that when I do sit down to edit I get quickly discouraged, as I'm finding the writing to be pretty crappy and it's frustrating and hard to get through.

Back to work!


Problems I'm Thinking About:
-chapters
-general suckage
-character consistency
-what is the title going to be??
-mastering the use of dialogue

The Main Character

Allow me to introduce you to the main character, Elle. These are early sketches of her, and while I know they aren't that good, I plan on doing another in the future that is like, a serious drawing of her. I also plan on having her grace the front cover, but we'll see how much power I have over that. (I've always wanted to paint my own cover, I hope I can.) Just for the record they're more than a year old. Her neck is bothering me.

I hit a bump in editing progress. This is a pretty pathetic start, huh? It's school related- I have two huge senior projects and Advanced Placement testing. The testing ends (for me) Wednesday and it's been tough juggling studying my ass off and editing, but for most of the week I got about five pages done a night. Proposals for both senior projects are due within the next two days so I really don't have time to even be writing this. Ah, forbidden loves.

Problems I'm Thinking About:
-chapters
-general suckage
-character consistency
-what is the title going to be??
-mastering the use of dialogue for character and plot development (anyone have any dialogue tips?)

Progress and Ignorances

I'm really getting stuff done! I'm at a point in the story that I've been waiting to write for forever, and felt like I would never get there. It's exciting! Of course I have no idea what I'm doing, as it involves a war and I'm really lost with army rankings and strategy and such, so I'm mostly fudging it. We'll see if it comes out horribly. If any of you know about military ranking systems, I'd love for you to explain it to me! I've looked it up, of course, and gotten a better feel for it but it's still hard for me to understand because I've had no prior exposure to it.

I'm about a week and a half behind in my word count due to a huge school project a couple weeks ago that killed my momentum, but I'm making it up quickly. I've passed the 150k mark! That's so exciting to me. It's funny that I care so much about these landmarks and yet I always just write right through them and realize a few hundred words later.

I was procrastinating last night and looking through my blogs and I noticed I don't actually have many sketches up here. When I have bad writing habits I've found that I tend to draw more, so I have quite a few from those five months I did nothing. I'll look through them and post a couple.

Current Word Count: 160,991