Saturday, January 23, 2010

Nibble, Nibble Like A Mouse

Right now, I'm nibbling away at my MS for The Thief Book. I'm dusting this one off from the shelf and trying to see what I could do with it to make it better.

Remember a while ago when I said I thought I knew what it needed? Not to be confused with the while before that when I said I didn't have the foggiest clue what to do with it. Well, I do plan to rewrite the whole ending. I just needed to remember the beginning a little more clearly before I could figure that out. So I'm rereading it.

I broke the somewhat chubby (70k -- eek!) manuscript into two chunks to handle as their desperate qualities demanded.

Part A: The first 37K or so, a.k.a. the part that I can still use -- I made some big changes that I already knew needed to be made and made notes where I plan to reread some stuff here. Plus, well, I couldn't resist the urge to made notes about things that bugged me as I went. I cannot deny that some pages look like they're bleeding blue (my preferred editing color), but plenty look in decent shape.

Part B: The remaining 33K, a.k.a. the stuff I'm cutting. Well, I'm rereading this to note parts that I like and would like to save for later use, either in this project or another. Plus, some things still need to follow a similar arc, so I want to make note of how I organized a lot of that before hand so I can profit from the work I did in August and September.

Happy me, I've already made it all the way through Part A. Now, time for Part B. That should go much faster, since I won't be stopping for line-edit-esque notes.

Since I'm goal oriented-ish, I feel like I can set a reasonable goal for the second part and make it through by the end of next Saturday. The goal: 6 pages a day. That should be quite feasible. I'll let you know how it goes.

How is everyone else's revising going? I hope you're all having a good weekend so far. :D

5 comments:

  1. Congratulations on the progress. It's really wonderful when you have a breakthrough like that and can see the potential of a work. Isn't it interesting how our work comes to us like that ... here and there? now and later? Good thoughts.

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  2. Good morning and congratulations. I love break- throughs. It's so refreshing when you have the "moment" when it all comes together and you have finally figured out what you want to do. And I agree, without the line-edits, it goes so much faster.

    This weekend I'm working on line-edits for The Lady...I finally figured out how to skim without getting bogged down in the story so it's going relatively fast. After that I get to re-align all my chapters because I keep cutting stuff and some chapters have 10 pages while others have thirty. That I know, will be a fair fat headache.

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  3. Tess -- Thanks. I'm glad about the breakthrough, since I rather liked the beginning. It is nice when the work just strolls up and says, "okay, this is how it's gonna be."

    Piedmont -- I'm glad you've figured out how to speed up your process. I hope the chapter realigning goes well for you.

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  4. Congrats with the chopping so far. I've had to rewrite an ending, but it was only 10,000 words or so. It was worth it though!

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  5. Stephanie -- I'm glad your rewriting went well. I believe that my rewriting will improve the story, though it will be challenging.

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