March Update: Lots of editing

I forgot that March is also a rough month for me. My mood fluctuates with the shifting weather, which is never consistent.

That said, I feel like I made a fair amount of progress this month. Not on anything I thought I would, but it wasn't a wasted month, that's for sure.

I started with a novel copy edit for one of my writers. That was an intensive, time-consuming project, but it went well and I feel good about it.

But. It had me in a very editing frame of mind. Maybe because of the dev edits then copy edits for two different projects that weren't mine. So, after one writing day trying to work on CLC, where I only managed 650 words before I let myself stop, I switched over to editing.

Yeah, yeah. Past Sara apparently knew better than I gave her credit for. I did need a break. From writing. From CLC. I wrote over 20k on it in two months, and I was getting bored. Which, isn't good when writing. Means readers will likely get bored. But. Either way. Taking a break was good.

I got myself excited for editing Mystwatch 2 by reading Mystwatch 3. Sound strange? It's not. I love that third book. I was going in to do a developmental editing treatment for it, but the truth is, I think structurally, it's solid. There are parts I thought about cutting or rearranging, but once I got in there, I decided everything is where it needs to be, and while I could trim up some spots, I think everything that's there needs to be. Although I will admit that after a month trying to edit book 2, I am starting to doubt my ability to recognize what is needed and isn't needed in my own books. I like all these scenes, all the dialogue. I don't want to cut anything. And each pass it gets bigger.

Anyway. There are things I need to tweak for book 3, don't get me wrong. It has a few things that need addressing in pretty big ways, and I haven't decided what to do about it, yet. But the fixes are more like a handful of lines here and there rather than writing entire new scenes or moving things around.

Which I am still doing with book 2. After about a week poking at book 3, I finally switched to book 2. And ugh. It needs so much work, still.

This will be the...third? Fourth? Fourth time, I think, that I've torn the pieces apart and rearranged them. Some of that is because the plot changes I'm making to book 2 have made it so a lot of other things need tweaking. Fixing the shelf paper as I go, as it were. I also needed to do a lot with my main character's motivation. She's very wishy washy in the current draft. Very reactive. So I made her proactive, and then also reactive to the things she proactively made happen. That sounds confusing, I know. Basically, for the first half of the book, she kind of just let people dictate what she could and couldn't do, and she grumbled about it a lot (very meanly, making her not very likeable). When she finally does something, it doesn't go well, and she goes back to not doing anything. And that happens three times. So I had to give her more action. Yes, she still has to deal with the fallout of her actions. But she's actually taking action. And moping less. And trying harder, honestly.

Anyway. That was a digression. I am making progress there. Slow progress. I beat my head against the wall for a few days, writing a new chapter I thought I needed. It's where I'd stopped my last attempt editing this last year, this new chapter. I spent an entire day trying to write it, after deciding what all needed to go into it. The entire day was pain. Each sentence I wrote, I wondered...is this hard because I don't want to write this, or because I don't need to write it.

Turns out, as a writer, you gotta trust yourself sometimes. It was hard to write because it didn't need to exist. I wasted an entire day coming up with a chapter that I did not need. That was rough. It made me nearly quit the book, again.

But. After giving my brain a break for a day, I sat down and wrote several brainstorming documents worth of, okay, if I don't write this chapter, what do I need to do instead? What parts that I came up with for this new chapter would still be good to include? If I don't put the parts from other chapters I was going to put here don't go here, after all, where do they go?

So I wrote a whole new outline of fixes I need to make for about seven chapters in the middle. Not all of it is big fixes. But I do need to write two new scenes and a montage. In a different place than where I was writing. Ugh.

I also still have to find places for a plotline that...well, should exist but doesn't, considering book 3. Which shouldn't be a lot. Just sentences here and there. And information in places where, before, I was vague.

The hardest part with all of that is making room for the new parts by cutting out some of the old stuff. Especially when it's a funny line or a nice moment. Hell, I had a really lovely scene in the new chapter I wrote that I can't use at all, sadly. But. I think right now, my focus will just be on putting new stuff in. I will worry about cutting stuff on another pass. I'd rather have everything I need and stuff I don't when I sit down to do the next phase of editing than have to write new stuff again.

Although the new stuff I'm adding, while I was uncertain about at first, I think has been really great. I guess we'll see if I still feel that way when I pick this back up again.

Which won't be for a couple of months. I got my editing to-do outline to a good place so I know what needs to happen for at least ten or so chapters. I think the next time I work on this, I'll have to do the same thing for the ten or so chapters after that, once I've got the middle section worked out.

Next month, I'll be working on a Sally Prescott adventure. I've signed up for Camp Nano, and I'm going to try to write the whole adventure. I need about 16k words. I've given myself May for overflow if I don't get there, but May, I go back to CLC. Then June, I will take another crack at editing book 2 of Mystwatch.

I don't know if I can wrap up my book 2 edit in a month. I still have October as a "wrap up projects" month along with Druid Wars 2 outline. So if I need to, I can finish it then. But. Maybe I can. My client did a massive dev edit rewrite in less than a month. And I made a lot of progress on my edit this month, even with spending a week on a copy edit for a client, and a little over a week focused on book 3. So, yeah. Maybe a full month focused on the second book, I'll be able to muddle through to the end. Although June isn't actually a full month, either. I have another copy edit to do for a week, and I'm spending a week traveling. So that really only gives me two weeks, again. I doubt I'll get to the end, then. Or maybe I will, now that I know what I need to do for most of the upcoming chapters. I won't be stuck, this time. I can just sit down and power through my detailed list of edits.

It might still need another editing pass, even after I'm done this one. Once I've got all the pieces in there that I think it needs to make a better story. Then, of course, the polishing begins. That'll take...well, hard to say. I've polished book one so many times, now. I'm not sure it'll ever live up to the polish of that book. But it doesn't have to, I suppose. Someday, maybe I'll hire an actual editor.

All right. This entry got long, devolving into vague details only I understand about my books. But. I think that's a nice change from talking about my 10-year plan. It's nice to talk about craft and stories rather than timelines and products. For now, I am focusing on the creative side. Maybe in a year or two, I'll start to think about the business stuff.

This year, I just want to make sure I can work on writing at least seven days out of the month. So far so good on that one! I spent fourteen days working on Mystwatch edits this month.

Three months of writing and editing so far. I am still doing this! Hope I can keep it up. I think I can. Even when I was "in a fight" with writing this month, I still didn't have any desire to quit. I think that's a good sign.