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
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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.
ReplyDeleteGood 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.
ReplyDeleteThis 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.
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."
ReplyDeletePiedmont -- I'm glad you've figured out how to speed up your process. I hope the chapter realigning goes well for you.
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!
ReplyDeleteStephanie -- 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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