pjthompson | Entries tagged with editing

Random quote of the day:

“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

—Anne Rice, Foreword to The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories by Franz Kafka

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear you the way you want to be heard.”

—Russell Baker, “How to Punctuate,” Ebony, November 1985

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Lucy and Ethel, Justin Bieber, or the Kardashian Klan. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

1. A sixth century vampire novel, part of a trilogy. King Arthur may be hanging around in it somewhere. It’s a first draft, and it has a resolution of sorts at the end, but is one of those novels that most definitely feels like a continuation. (I hate those.)

2. A second world steampunkish adventure fantasy. This one can stand alone, but is also part of a trilogy. It’s in a fairly polished state, but there’s a broken part in Act III. I think I fixed it, but I haven’t had the heart to reread the book to see if I fixed it as well as I thought I did.

3. A contemporary fantasy that’s in second draft stage, and can stand alone, but is…repeat after me, “part of a trilogy.” Chronologically, the middle novel in the trilogy, I still plan to begin the trilogy with this one as it gives the least away about the overall story arc. Probably closer to Charles de Lint’s Newford than urban fantasy or paranormal romance—if Chas wrote it for laughs, included Hot Sex, and Newford was a mythological rural county in Southern California.

There is no right or wrong answer here, just asking your opinion.

ETA: I have had one offline vote for #1.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

You know that thing where you’ve edited a book so often you’ve cut all the life out of it? Yeah, that.

I’ve been reading the last hardcore edit I did on Shivery Bones with an eye towards e-booking it in some future when I magically have the time and wherewithal. I haven’t read it in a year and a half. This is the first reread where I think the edit has actually damaged the book. I went from 122k to 109k and that seems to have stripped some of the flow and life. Understand, we’re talking about a first draft that came in around 150k, which was definitely bloated and in need of cutting. But I think now that 122k version may actually have been pretty tight. The last edit cut into bone.

Certain parts of the manuscript are better for that cutting, but other parts have a disjointed, lifeless feel. I’m considering going back to the the non-eviscerated versions of those scenes/chapters.

Some books can be cut down to bone and still retain life, but not all. I recently read a novel by an author I love. Her series tend to be magically imaginative and inventive, and her books are usually big. It doesn’t matter. I love being in them no matter how long they take to read. But she’s not on the bestseller lists, not quite, and I’ll bet you anything her publisher started blanching at those big manuscripts. I say that because the current book, part of a series I’ve loved as much as the author’s other books, is much shorter than previous ones. Throughout the reading, it felt incomplete to me, missing beats, wanting something that kept slipping through the fingers–cut to the bone and unable to quite articulate itself as those bones clattered along. A large part of the life had been taken away. I intuited that it had once been there, but no more.

In the current publishing climate, this is happening quite a lot to midlist writers. Even to some bestsellers, I hear. It’s a dirty, crying shame. These are half-books, not allowed to be what they naturally are. E-books, in the other hand, don’t have to be as skinny as paper books to “turn a profit.” (Though, don’t get me started on shaky publishing accounting. Better you should read this post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.) (Thanks, safewrite, for the link.)

E-books don’t care if you go a little long. Which is not to say they shouldn’t be edited and made as tight and crisp as possible, but you don’t have to kill them in the process. They don’t have to rattle along like a defleshed skeleton struggling to keep itself in one piece.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

"Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar-room vernacular, that is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive."

—Raymond Chandler, letter to the editor of the Atlantic monthly, quoted in The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959 by Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane

(Not being Raymond Chandler, I would like to state that I value my editing and proofing friends and colleagues highly.)

( Illustrated version. )

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

"Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we.' ”

—attributed to Mark Twain

I couldn't verify that Twain said this, but it was too good not to use. I've also seen this less common variant: "There are three categories of those entitled to use 'We' in the first person: Royalty, Editors, and People With Tapeworms." I couldn't verify that one, either.

(Thank you,

handworn.)

( Illustrated version. )

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

"It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly."

—C. J. Cherryh

(Widely quoted. I haven't got the energy to verify.)

( Illustrated version. )

I've discovered that writing a comic novel is no more fun than writing Serious Stuff. When you get to the crappy middle, it's still the crappy middle and still a chore. I find the same level of resistance as I felt with my sturm und drang novels, the same desire to goof off and do anything but write the damned thing, the same unrelenting doubts, the same pounding forward just to get the words on the page, the same certainty that I've lost my voice and am drifting in a Sargasso of cliché.

Well, actually, I probably am drifting in a Sargasso of cliché. It's a first draft. It's supposed to stink like mats of decaying sea matter. But it is something of a revelation to me that the same processes occur in my tortured psyche whether I am sailing in sunshine or storm.

What a rip off.

The good thing? This feels much closer to my natural voice than the high fantasy/steampunk novel I'm editing. I've completely lost track of who I am on that one. I imagine some time away from it will help.

The other thing? Doing a close reading/edit on that other novel (one of the stormy ones) while trying to write the funny is schizophrenic, to say the least. In fact, much of my writing energy for days now has gone into finishing up the edit. I am closing in on the end of the edit (2 more chapters!) and will concentrate on getting that done before diving back into the WIP.

And the edit? That shining castle on the hill that I first envisioned is looking more like a shotgun shack in the swamp these days. The story is far more melodramatic then I thought it would be. I suspect I don't really know what it is at this point. Late in the late draft blues. I've floated on that Sargasso before, too.

Truer words were never ~~spoke~~ spoken

That's how the title's supposed to read, but apparently the crappy new LJ interface doesn't allow formatting in the subject lines.

Also apparently, I stole this image from Deanna Hoak. I typed "copyediting" into Google, then the image page, then when I clicked on this image it took me to her website. So, thanks

deannahoak.

ETA: Arrr.

I sent out a story today and will probably send another tomorrow. The current crop of revised stories before the next novel comes on me and I stop making short stories.*

The next novel is heading my way. I feel the eruption bubbling in my gut, got all the necessary research ducks lined up and quacking. And the Universe keeps sending things my way, things that would make a very good addition to Charged with Folly.

Does that ever happen to you? It seems like whenever I draw close enough to an idea that writing is imminent I'm suddenly surrounded by things to feed the idea: some odd crag of reality I can carve to my purposes, strange factoids that deepen and enrich existing plot/worldbuilding ideas, bits of dialogue and images from the every day world that I can adapt. It seems the airwaves, the books and magazines I pick up, the 'Net are suddenly full of stuff I need and can use.

Now, I know part of that may be that I'm in the frame of mind to notice these things, but it's weird nonetheless. And I much prefer the romantic notion that the Universe (or my Right Brain or Subconscious or Higher Self) is saying, "Do this one!"

But first, I have to finish that last aching groan-and-cut rewrite of Shivery Bones. It's actually going pretty well. I'm dead on my word-cut schedule and I dropped below an important psychological point last week: the novel is now less than 130k (from 143k). In fact, it's down to 126k at this point, and I'm only halfway through. I need to give myself as much wiggle room as possible because I'll want to add a couple of pages at the front of the novel for the new prologue-short chapter one. (It's not a prologue, as it takes place just before the action portrayed in the old chapter one.)

And then I'm never rewriting SB again unless someone pays me to (or asks nicely). I said that before about SB, right before I sent it to Tor and they requested a full, but I mean it this time. Really!

Random quotes of the day:

"May we not then sometimes define insanity as an inability to distinguish which is the waking and which the sleeping life? We often dream without the least suspicion of unreality: 'Sleep hath its own world', and it is often as lifelike as the other."

—Charles Dodgson

"The wealthy are grouped together because it gives them a warm feeling to look upon others of their own kind. The poor are lumped together because they have no choice."

—Peter David, Sir Apropos of Nothing

*Not my choice. I just can't seem to concentrate on stories and novels at the same time. Wish I could.

Getting my life back in gear of the day: After my house move in November into a smaller space I was unpacking in a frenzy at first, searching for the necessities and getting them out of the garage and into my rooms. I was so happy to be out of the apartment from hell that I got downright giddy at first. The space restrictions caught up with me first, and I've had to make some decisions about just what were necessities and with the chaos left from that first frenzied unpacking. Large swatches of my life still remain unpacked in the garage.

One of the crucial things that are still packed are my art supplies. I've always been prone to making things, both in a art-for-art's-sake way and in a meditative/spiritual context. Since November that whole aspect of my life has been completely ignored. Not being able to make things makes the blues bluesier, makes me even more obsessive-compulsive than usual, deadens some of the senses of my creative animal. That nervous, self-devouring energy gets dissipated when I make things: it doesn't go into the object, it just ceases to exist. Nothing makes me feel more positive than when I successfully complete an art object and imbue it with a bit of my positive spirit. It's a whole other feeling from the warm, rich vibe I get from a good writing session. I need it as much as I need the writing, and I'd forgotten that.

So in recent weeks, I've been taking steps to get back that which has been lost. I still haven't found all my stuff, or have found it in random, frustrating bits—the jeweler's anvil and chasing hammer, but not the jewelry tools, for instance—but I've retrieved enough to make do and get creative with my hands again. And that's a peaceful, easy feeling. I'm moving in the right direction.

Quote of the day:

"Writers would be warm, loyal, and otherwise terrific people—if only they'd stop writing."

—Laura Miller, Salon.com review of "Finding Forrester"

To which I would answer, "Depends on the writer." Some of us would be much worse if we didn't write.

Writingness of the day: If I keep going at my present rate, I should be able to cut another 10k from Shivery Bones. Predicated on ifs, of course, but I'm amazed how many fat and wasteful phraselets I'm finding. In the case of the opening chapters, it's been downright embarrassing. I sent this out to people? Aiee. And in other even more boring news, the transfer of the ms. file to the new "purified" template seems to have worked: the word count and page count are consistent on both Macs and the PC and all versions of Word. Huzzah. Even better, the lowest word count is the one that's sticking. Huzzah, huzzah.

Startling new study of the day: So, on the radio today I heard the findings of a new study conducted by S. Mark Young of USC and Dr. Drew Pinsky of...Dr. Drew's Loveline on Narcissism and Celebrity. This study comes to the shocking conclusion that celebrities...wait for it...tend to be more narcissistic than other people. Not only that, narcissists are attracted to showbiz! Wowie zowie and gee willikers! I wonder how much money they spent on that study?

Writingness of the day: I started the groan-and-cut rewrite of Shivery Bones yesterday, going through and cutting prepositional phrases and other kinds of unnecessary verbiage. I made every sentence and every word work for its living, and even cut a couple of more paragraphs I didn't think worked hard enough. I cut 3 pages from chapter one. Okay, so only about one and a half pages of that was actual cutting. I realized that the reason I was getting three different word counts on the same file, depending on which computer I used, was probably because the Word template was corrupted. I'd been using a heavy-duty research publication template--which was overkill. For my ms. I really only need three modified styles: Normal, Heading 1, and Indented text. So I created a new stripped-down template and as I finish the changes in the old ms., reassigned everything to Normal and moved it into the new template. That alone cut two pages. (This is, after all, part of what I do for a living, so I should have thought of this sooner.) I have faith in Word's ability to do something totally bizarre and mess this up again, especially in documents over fifty pages, but I'm hoping this makes a crucial difference.

Yeah, I know. All this is fascinating.

Quote of the day:

"It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible."

—George W. Foote, 1850-1915

I've also seen this as "the proud boast of woman that she," but I couldn't find a source I trusted (i.e., not a quotes page) that listed it, so I'm going to have to go on faith with this one.

Disclaimer for the Quote of the Day:

These quotes do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, The Universe or its subsidiaries, Leonard Maltin, Siegfried and Roy, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. However, they frequently reflect the views of the Cottingsley Fairies.

ETA: THIS JUST IN! New study shows that shelves hold things up!

Quote of the day:

"He who still sees the stars as 'up' does not perceive with the eye of truth."

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Writingness of the day: I've passed the 9k words cut mark, which is almost halfway to my goal of 20k. Unfortunately, I'm on the last third of the ms. So when I finish this read through, which is also integrating the three critiques I received, I'll let the whole mess sit for a week, then read through it again with a concentrated eye on killing words. Kill, kill, kill! Take no prisoners!

But here's an irritating thing: on three different computers with three different versions of Word I get different word counts in SMF--PC using Word 2000, work Mac using Word 98, home Mac using Word 2004. And I'm not talking about a few words difference, I'm talking about a 3-4000 word difference! It's the same file, with the same margins set, but a vastly different page count between the three platforms. I do not understand this at all. This difference pretty much disappears when I use the Word line count, so I may be forced to use that. It's higher than my lowest SMF count (on Word 98), whine, whine.

(And yeah, I did that 60 characters across the page, 25 double-spaced lines down the page to make sure I wasn't doing something dippy.)

So if the SMF word count for Night Warrior/The Making Blood on Word 98 was 187k, that means it's even longer than I thought and that means . . . I don't want to think about it.

In other fascinating writing news (because I know the above paragraphs were riveting), my final cut on "Eudora's Song" is 6,200 words. I've managed to bring it down from the bloated first draft of 10k words. It's a much better story for it. But I still don't think it hits the spot, exactly. It's just done for now and--out it goes.

You're getting sleepy...sleepy...

Here's something to wake up

merebrillante:

( Mesmerizing )

Quote of the day:

"It is always best and safest to count on nothing from the Americans but words."

—Neville Chamberlain

For all you Sean Bean fans out there...The Field. I think you have to be pretty hardcore to put up with this one. I saw it at the height of my Sean Bean obsession, and for some reason it popped into my brain today on the drive into work.

This film was clearly designed to be an Important Film, a dramatic high at the end of Richard Harris's career, and consequently has much High Drama and Serious Acting. It also has one of the most ridiculous endings ever which, despite the seriousness I was supposed to be feeling, made me laugh my socks off. Any Monty Python fan would probably feel the same. There is livestock involved. Unfortunately, no French Taunters.

But Seanie has a nice Irish brogue, is gorgeous (of course), is partly a bad boy, partly a lover. Don't get me wrong, this is a seriously droopy film, and although it got some positive critical blah-blah at the time, I thought it mostly overdone and, ultimately, ridiculous. Fast forward through all the bits without Seanie in. But be sure to watch the end.

Oh, and for Sting fans and trivia collectors, Frances Tomelty, his first wife for whom he wrote his stalker song, "I'll Be Watching You," plays a young widow in this flick.

Writingness of the day: I managed to cut only 500 more words yesterday (and sweated to do that much). This portion of saggy middle wasn't as saggy as I remembered. I may have to take another pass through this monster once I finish this one. *sigh* I'll soldier on tomorrow, but I'm going to spend the lunch hour rereading "Eudora" one last time.

Quote of the day:

"I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil."

—Truman Capote

Today's quote cracked me the hell up when I pulled it out of the random file. That's because I spent the week working on an old novelette, "Loose Dogs." I cut 1500 words and it's still 9k. *sigh* At least it's tighter. I'm not sure if it's at that magic place of "I can't cut it anymore and do justice to the story" (I suspect it isn't), but I've exhausted the subjectivity of my current perspective. I'll probably slap it up on the OWW one of these days soon and take it from there.

And I'll probably work on more stories for awhile before tackling another long project. Try to catch up on some critiques. I'm creatively tired right now and just want to kick back. I feel pressure to jump right back into something big again, but I tell myself to ignore that man behind the curtain—for the time being anyway. I needs me some rest. And time to get over that bluesy feeling that hits after every big project is done.

In other news:

Lynn's birthday is coming up in July and to celebrate we're going on a tour of "the most famous and infamous sights of death, murder and scandal in Los Angeles." She picked that over the nighttime ghost tour of L.A. and the Queen Mary ghost tour. It should be a blast. :-)

http://www.dearlydepartedtours.com/DDT/index.html

You know, one of the things I really love about this town is how chock-full of good old fashion sordidity it is. Gotta love it.

I've mostly taken a vacation from The Novel while I've been on vacation from work. I hammered out the structural problems I had with the three timelines early in the vacation so that when I get back to work on it tomorrow, I should have a much clearer roadmap. I feel good about that, but I thought the time off would do me good, much as I want to get it over and done with. And generally, I feel real good about the prospect of getting back to it. I'd started to dread it before the vacation.

Instead, during my time, off I've concentrated mostly on working on older stories, novelette length, trying to whip them into shape. Working on short stories, after that first burst of writing, the visionary stage, is always an agony for me. I get so confused about what to cut and what to leave in—what if I cut the one thing that will make people gasp? I know this is irrational, but when it comes to editing short stories, I find myself spinning in circles, uncertain which way is true north, often giving up and trunking the thing out of sheer confusion.

(And thanks to those who read one of these stories and were so helpful.)

I don't have anything like this problem when I'm editing my novels. I tend to throw everything but the kitchen sink into the first draft, knowing even at the time that some of it is going to come out. But the first draft is the working out phase, where I begin to feel the true shape of the novel inside me, where the plot twists one way, then another, and one direction finally settles into place. With novels, I do most of my agony up front and get it out of the way, and that process in and of itself points me to true north. When it comes time for subsequent drafts, I still have that sense and it becomes readily apparent what needs to go and what must stay, what was a tangent and what was vital background. One pass through to cut those unnecessary scenes, another pass through to cut fat language and rambling descriptions, etc., and that word count starts coming down. Third drafts are harder because that's where I have to go after the darlings of scene and the darlings of language—and I may be a grownup girl and able to accomplish these things, but it ain't always easy.

And sometimes they don't work. Sometimes I have to throw them into a trunk for a long time and move on to the next project before I can see what's wrong. It helps to have a number of novels under my belt; it helps to have several in various stages of completion in the pipeline. It does get easier with time.

But it's almost impossible for me with short stories. Those are all "agony after" because I haven't had time during the writing to find true north. I have to discover that by chipping away and pulling apart, in running from them in panic. Sometimes I edit them for years and trunk them for long periods in between, feeling helpless. Which doesn't do a hell of a lot for my short story career, I can tell you.

So, I depressed myself last night by sitting down and figuring out the page count for each chapter I've finished thus far, calculating an average page count, estimating how many chapters it will take to finish, and doing the math (SMF). Let us say that it was more than I anticipated. There's not a lot left in the 1968 and 1977 timeframes, but the 6th century has a lot going on.

If you are an organized writer, you might say to yourself, "Pam, shouldn't you have known this before now?"

The answer is no. I couldn't really do an estimate like this before because there is always a certain amount of terra incognito in my novels as I write them. And my plots are always complicated. I'm just now at a point where all the plot elements are coming to fruition, where the lookout has called, "Land ho!" and I can see the entire stretch of water between me and that shore I hope to land upon.

Realistically, I think it probably won't take as many words to get there as my crude estimate suggests, but the thought that it might took the wind out of my sails. Just a bit. The wind has picked up again and I'm still on course. But.

And for those of you kind enough to agree to read this monster in its entirety, I won't be expecting you to read this monster. I plan to do some hacking (maybe quite a lot) before I inflict it on any beta.

And then there's this here post right here by

sartorias featuring Rudyard Kipling talking about writing long and cutting down and the work being the richer for it. That was some consolation.

everyonesakitty has come up with a fun and horrifying word usage formula. Here are my sins so far in my 109k WIP first draft:

"How many times in your approx 100K-word manuscript do you use the following words? (My offenses are in parentheses)"

1. eyes (292) - in my defense, eyes are an important plot point...oh bother
2. softly (12)
3. gaze (10)
4. stood (65) - ouch
5. walk (80) - ouch
6. just (173) - ouch, one of my Achilles' Heel words I'm supposed to be watching out for
7. carefully (4)
8. nod (50) - yep, they do too much nodding
9. raise (30)
10. glance (11)
11. suddenly (18) - another one I'm supposed to be watching out for
12. dark (73) - um, there's a lot of scenes in the dark
13. sigh (63) - that's painful; my characters do way too much sighing

"Feel free to report your offenses. :D

p.s. In case you haven't put a ton of thought into this, the easiest way to count is to move your 100K words into a fresh doc, then do a replace of each of the words you're counting, and see how many replacements were made for each."

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Echoes in a Hollow Space

I'm here because I'm here because I'm here

Entries tagged with editing

Obsession

!Punctuation!?!

Which novel should I edit next?

Dem bones

Stet

Think I'll eat some worms

Garbage in, not garbage out

Ha! Fooled ya!

Truer words were never spoke...spoken

I feel a novel coming on

Moving back into moving forward

Everything is about me

Fascinatin'

Sean Bean smells of elderberries

Wielding scissors

The agony and the editery

The wind beneath my whinge

Things to do instead of leaving the house

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May 2025

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