Editing, oh my, editing.

I discovered a day or two ago that I had three short stories in need of editing. I've been flitting around working on so many projects that in the hurly and the burly I seem to have stopped working on these particular projects.

Incidentally, it was when putting together a to-do list that I realised that it was three stories rather than just the one I remembered.

That got me to thinking. It is actually harder for me to do editing than the original writing. Reading my work back and considering each sentence and each paragraph for re-writing or even cutting strains my faculties more than throwing words down on paper. Thus I suspect a subconscious  thingy has made me hide these stories from memory!

Anyway, today I started in on the first round of editing, and half of one story is done. It was had to start!

Am I the only one who finds this "editing" difficult?

p.s. I can recommend a to-do list for all of the writing stuff. Add a to-do item for each of writing, editing, proofing, publishing and promoting.

Progress, at last.

Tonight I completed my first editing pass over my AMRAT story (giant fighty robots).  I was horrified at how awful that first draft was.  Commas instead of full stops, missing capital letters, incomplete sentences "as" instead of "is" and any number of straight forward typos.

Still, that's twenty pages knocked into a legible state that I'm not embarrassed to pass onto my editor. It felt good to get that out of the way, it's cleared the decks for the next project.

On the small pile of outlined works is a Lovecraftian short story and pulp era detective game book. The Lovecraftian story is a "kind-of" sequel to my "Incursion" story which is currently locked into a six-month exclusivity agreement with Amazon, so I'll leave that to the side for the next few months.

That means the game book is the next project. I plan on following the same process as with the last game book, in that I will aim to write two or three entries every day. The current outline has 121 entries so that means I should have the first draft done in about 40 days.

Back to writing...almost

It's been quite a while, but finally I'm getting back to writing.  I had two big jobs that were keeping me away from pounding the keyboard properly, and now they are complete. The annotation project is completed and up for sale at one outlet (more to come later, but they can wait!), and the formatting-job also is done and up for sale.

This means I can get back to writing... no wait!  Not writing, but editing!!!  My sci fi short story (working title "AMRAT: The Bank Heist") has been sitting await a damned good edit for weeks.  Now it's going to have its chance as I turn my editing scissors on it. It's 29 pages, about 8700 words, so my first editing pass will take a couple of evenings effort. Then I'll be handing it on to my editor, who will no doubt "rip the crap" out of it.

I'm not writing... but I am working with my own creations, and that's something.Still, a couple of evenings looking at this baby, and then I have to decide on which of my two outlined stories to start working on.

Giving "Incursion" the once over

I decided to take another break from the big annotation project and instead get go through the edits I had back from the editor well over a week ago for my story "Incursion".  There was a lot of red text in the story.  I didn't agree with all of the red lines.  Some lines that were scored through with red, I left in as I think them essential to get over the attitudes of the characters.  There were other things too that I left in or slightly reworded.

I always look at the editors returns as informed opinion rather that a rule of law. I read the suggested change, and consider what it means and why the editor put it in there. Only after that do I apply the change.

In the end I implemented lots and lots of the changes, massaged a couple, and did re-write the ending which was ,as the editor suggested, a bit weak.

Dealing with edits like this always takes it out of me.  The story is only 19 pages of  double spaced text, but it still took me the whole evening to work through them.

I do have a better story now, and send out my unending thanks to Mrs The Editor.

Re-editing complete

After the whole trademark issue with the Gamebook , mentioned in a previous post, we had some serious thinking and work to do.  First off, we had to check that none of the other names we were using were trademarked in the same way. Then as the main character had changed, some of the secondary characters names had to change too as they wouldn't made sense to anyone familiar with Barsoom. We also found that the objective of the book, the "mission", had to change!

None of these were/are major changes, and I've just completed my required edits.  I also took the opportunity to fix a couple of minor issues that I had spotted in the P.O.D. version that had slipped through all of the proofing.

I've handed the work back to my collaborator so that he can do his changes.  He's actually got the most work to do for this revision.  Not only the text edits, but he is also "cover man", and he is going to have to remake the cover using the new title and cover blurb. He's very good at that sort of thing, but I appreciate it is a lot of work.

A sea of Red!

My Lovecraft inspired short story "Incursion" has returned from the editor. Yikes!  It's a sea of red ink. Things crossed out, sentences circled, suggestions edged in round the side and requests for clarification. Oh, and the ending was a bit too quick.

I find it astounding that I write, then I edit, then I double check before anyone else sees it. Then when it comes back looking like its under a red film of ink I am always surprised.  I ask myself, what can I have missed this time!?! Looking through the notes made on the hardcopy it becomes all too obvious what I missed.

I think there must be a better way for me to edit. I did consider submitting it to the "Bookoven" project, but that is only a typo and grammar thing, and it only examines one sentence at a time. My first drafts need "bigger picture" editing than that.

I'll let this edit sit for a while yet, as I'm working on an "annotation" project at the moment and only 120 pages into a total 456. Once I get the draft on that complete, then I'll come back and implement the red text OF DOOM!

Editing a short story

With no other new story idea burning in my soul, I took the opportunity today to go through my first edit on a story I call "Incursion".  I finished the first draft of this a week or two ago. On this first edit I was just doing the basics.

• Checking for spooling mistaks. 
• Making sure each sentence actually makes sense.
• Trying to remove repeated words that I repeat.
• Adding the odd detail to scenes to increase flavour.
• Correcting awkwardly worded bad sentences

The story is a tongue in cheek Lovecraftian tale, that I'll be branding as a "Lovecraftian short". the third of my stories in that mould. there may be a collection of these at some date in the future.

And a quote from the story...

"Her name is Georgina." He explained.

"Is that a crystal ball?"

"Oh yes. She's very good with it."

I stared at the professor. "What is this place?"

"We are the governments special research and defence division."

"Special..." I was lost for words. "What sort of government work is Georgina doing with a crystal ball?"