Month: January 2021

The Joys of Editing

On By Dan MelnickIn Writing ProcessLeave a comment

I have a love/hate relationship with editing. I love how it makes my prose better, my stories stronger, and my characters richer. I hate … having to do it. OK, that’s not entirely true. I don’t mind a few passes in, but it’s that first pass after the rough draft that’s a real slog. I’m a quarter of the way through that very pass right now.

The other day I cleaned up an entire chapter and then realized that I think the whole thing may have to get axed altogether. I’m really trying to streamline this story down to bare bones and while I think the chapter is great character building and shows what’s at stake personally for my main two characters, it may not be fast enough. I’m on the fence. It might be a judgement call once the beta readers get their hands on it. In the meantime, I’ll probably make two versions and see if that changes how I feel.

That’s still progress of a sort, though.

Today, I’m crawling through because I’m at a scene where my main character introduces her partner to who’ll be their crew for the book. So not only am I revealing four new characters, but going through to make sure their speech patterns are distinctive is exhausting. Oh and there’s still things like basic dialogue, blocking, and exposition to do too. When I write long conversations, I tend to just write the conversation and leave most of the blocking for Future Dan. Well now I AM Future Dan and I’m a little peeved at Past Dan.

But that’s editing, right?

Back into the grind, I go!

New Mission Statement

On By Dan MelnickIn PersonalLeave a comment

So it’s been a few months again. Time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ … you get the idea.

I finished NaNoWriMo and was more methodical than ever with my spreadsheet keeping thanks to a class I took recently. Seriously, I was adding formulas crunching numbers left and right just because I could. It was wonderful. The excuse to whip myself like a workhorse and hit 50K words in a month didn’t finish the book like I’d hoped, but it was darned close. So I kept at the spreadsheet and 20K words later it was finally done. That’s my ninth novel in the can for those of you counting at home.

Usually now, I take a month of two off before I begin editing, but I’m diving back in after only a week this time. My New Years Resomolution was to write two books this year instead of my annual one. The book I just finished doesn’t count as one of the two I plan on writing this year by the way. To do that, I need to be more productive all around. I’ve got almost all of the brainstorming done for the next novel. There are still a few kinks to work out but then I’m close to the outlining stage. I discovered a while ago that I’m not great at working on two projects at once. Well, too bad. This is going to be a learning year for me as I decided not just to write two books, but to also push myself as an author from craft to business.

I felt like most of last year I was floundering just to do what I wanted to do. I’m sure many can relate. So this year, I’m kicking it up a notch.

But I’m still in a good place. My natural rhythm the past couple of years had me starting a book around September. So I’d finish it by the end of the year, spend the spring cleaning it up, begin querying in the summer, and start a new book in the fall. Rinse and repeat. If I can get this new one started by February, though, that’ll shift my whole time table. Devoting more time to writing means devoting more time to editing later, but that’s just something I’m going to have to deal with. I’ve got some new writer goals now, both big and little picture, and I need to get a move on so I can begin sharing them all with you!