It was kind of a moody morning, so I took this and made it even moodier using filters and styles in both the Snapseed and Formulas photo editing apps.
Tag: editing
-
-
About five and a half weeks ago I finished the first draft of a hard-boiled detective novel.
Today, the editing has commenced!
-
I don’t like editing. Like, really don’t like it.
Editing to me has always be one of those things I put off and put off and put off (and put off) until I finally run out of excuses. Then I scrounge around under the couch, certain there must be some old, partially eaten, mold-covered excuses I can use until I can get to the store and buy some more.
I’m a world class procrastinator, and when it comes to things I don’t like, I never fail to put off for decades what I can do today. But that just doesn’t fly when it comes to publishing.
I’ve written three books. One I’ve edited to the point where I’m now publishing it on Amazon. The other two are in draft mode. The picture you see at the top of this post is the first two pages of the second book I wrote (and finished–given the number of abandoned writing projects on my computer, it feels important to add that the the first drafts were completed). It is still in first draft status and has been for about seven months or so. I’ve red-penned the first twenty-six pages out of two hundred plus pages. I’ve got a ways to go.
I started editing this second book, “Dirt”, about four weeks ago. It was immediately after I finished the first draft of my third book. I was on a roll and didn’t want the mojo to vanish, didn’t want to slow the momentum [Scott looks around his desk for another tired metaphor and, failing to find one, moves on]. I wanted to continue on and prove to myself that I could conquer the Editing Beast.
Yeah.
No.
The Editing Beast was definitely not a windmill. It broke my lance, killed my horse, and ripped through my armor to tear out my still-beating determination with its fearsome jaws. This sumbitch tore me apart.
I have done just about everything to avoid editing. There has been food, and running, and reading. There has been TV. Justified is back on (woohoo!) as is The Walking Dead (meh). I have discovered Longmire, the whole first season of which I took in like a python unhinging its jaw to swallow a goat. In short, I’ve done everything I can to avoid “Dirt”. And here’s the secret as to why [leans in to whisper]: I don’t like “Dirt”.
It’s true. I shake my head in disbelief at my own feelings about my own work, but it’s true. I don’t like it. “Dirt” is the most Stephen King-like thing I’ve ever written, long or short. It just had that sort of vibe to it. And I dig Stephen King. One hundred years from now, when people ask which author is the most remembered author of the twentith century, it will be Stephen King, just like it is Charles Dicken for the nineteenth century. He’s not writing high fiction, some of his stuff is (by his own admission) a “clunker”. But he tells a helluva story. When I was commuting 120 miles roundtrip every day for work (barefoot, through the snow, without a coat) I would listen to King on audiobook. Since his one goal for so long was to scare the crap out of you, he was great to take on long car rides. Guaranteed to keep you awake. King was one of the first adult authors I remember reading as I grew older.
So it naturally follows that a novel I’ve written with a King-esque feel to it would completely jazz me, right? Wrong. “Dirt” started off as a short story that couldn’t find an ending. The cast of characters grew and grew. Then the primary antagonist introduced himself and I stepped back and asked the book “Really? Is this REALLY where we’re going?” The book nodded emphatically and then dug its heels in as I tried to drag it acros the finish line like a dog going to the vet. It was a rock fight to get this thing done.
Now I’m staring down the editing barrel and asking myself how much do I really want to tackle it. There is so much work to do. Like, a dump truck’s worth of manure to shovel through to find a lost engagement ring. And I’m asking myself, how badly do I want to work on it. Especially since I have another book, my third, that I really did enjoy writing and that I’m looking forward to editing. I think I started doing some editing on “Dirt” because I knew I’d have to abandon it in March when I get to work on scrubbing the hard-boiled detective book. So if I didn’t get around to doing anything on “Dirt”, well does anybody really care?
Unfortunately, yes, I do care. I’m not happy with it, but do care quite a bit. I want to see it finished, I want to see it to completion. I want to see it improved and published and enjoyed. So it might be time to stop scouring the house for excuses, putting it off, and get down to some serious work. Which I’ll do.
I hearby make a solemn vow to stop procastinating over editing “Dirt” and to begin the serious work on getting it into publishable shape.
Right after I edit the other book.
-
This weekend was a busy one:
- There was more birthday celebration for another family member.
- There were the cupcakes my elder daughter insisted had to be baked as part of the celebration, and the extra time involved in supervising her, as she wanted to bake them herself.
- There was a mid-year music lesson concert for the kids, who are taking five instruments between them, and so had five separate, albeit short, performances.
- There was the annual meeting of the church, for which I helped with the preparation of the lunch food that was served.
- There was the usual running around to grocery stores, Target, and the like.
- There was a nice five mile run in a -2 degree windchill. Okay, maybe describing that as “nice” is a bit of a stretch. But I was needed and I enjoyed it.
So, quite a lot.
You know what I didn’t do this weekend? I didn’t write.
This may sound strange coming from a writer and self-publishing author, but I didn’t write, didn’t want to, and don’t have any regrets about it.
I finished a first draft of a novel on Friday, after making sure that I was consistently writing for five straight months. And I loved finishing and love the fact that in another five or six weeks I’ll get to go back and tackle it like it’s brand new to me. I love the fact that my head is already moving on to finishing done other editing projects I’ve got in various states. I love the fact that I’ve already got the idea for the next novel in this detective series, and that I’m starting to plot the outline.
But as much as I love it, I also need the break. Stephen King once answered in an interview the question of how often he writes by saying he writes every day but Christmas and his birthday. He gave this answer because it sounded good to him, and because it sounded less crazy that the real answer which was, at the time, every day. That’s great for him. He’s Stephen King after all. But I need the break.
Writing is like anything else, at least for me. I love it, but even though I do love, and often need to do it, like a type of compulsion, I need a break from it, a mini-vacation if you will. I love pizza too, but if I had it every day, I’d eventually hate it.
So here’s to a little time off. I figure in about a week, I’ll be going stir crazy and will dive head first into another project. In the meantime, I think I’ll read a little and catch up on some TV.
-
I finished the first draft of a new book tonight. I’m both pleased and surprised by this. Typically it takes me forever to finish the first draft of a book. How It Ends took nearly a year, and my second book (currently unedited, in first draft status, and tentatively titled Dirt) took me three years.
So what’s the difference?
Length for one. This new book clocks in at only 54,000 words. That’s barely a novel. Like, just scraping by as a novel. Personally, I think it will expand as I edit it. Stephen King once described himself as a “putter-inner”, and that describes me pretty well, too. When I’m editing, things tend to swell. Then, as I go through the second pass, they come back down again. And knowing this book is only in the fifty thousand word range, and Dirt is edging on 130,000 words, it’s no wonder that this one took less time. I started this one around September and finished it up five month later.
The other reason is that I made a concerted effort to write it, almost every day. There were some days I didn’t, some days I just couldn’t make the time. Life happens, right? ‘Course it does. But unlike my other books, I’d always come back, and in a relatively short span of time. I think the longest I stayed away from this book was two days, whereas I left Dirt in a near-complete state for nine months before finishing it up. This makes a big difference. For one, it’s not as daunting when you return to the book and try to pick up the threads after having been out of the practice of writing for nine months. For another, you don’t have to spend half hour going back several pages to several chapters to try and remember what the hell was happening when last you saw the characters. I was able to keep the characters and the plot points foremost in my writing thoughts and never needed to wonder if I was woefully out of bounds. When I go back through the book, there will be some continuity gaps and some things out of character, but not on the level I’ve experienced before. (I hope…)
So now for the editing, and for that, I will wait. Taking further cues from Uncle Stevie (hey, his term, not mine), I plan to let this one sit for a bit so I can forget all about it. I figure I’ll pick it back up in March and begin to go through it and it will be like reading a brand new book. One with all kinds of typos and errors and issues just itching to be fixed up. It’s hard-boiled crime fiction, so I hope to edit quickly and have it ready to go for summer reading. I figure a nice way to kick of the beach season is with a beach book.
In the meantime, Dirt calleth my name. “Scott: edit me. Edit me…”
Given the size and difficulty I had writing it, I shudder when I hear it call…
Scott Lyerly 