A friend of mine gave me some good advice: the longer you wait the better. It’s been two weeks, and I’m pretty fuzzy on about half of the thing, so I think another two weeks will do the trick.

Then the editing games begin.

There are articles and advice all over the Internet concerning editing. I’ve been doing some reading, just to see how other people go about it. I mentioned in my last post that yes, I’m a trained copy editor, but editing a 700 word news story is a different ballgame when you go about editing a 50,000 word novel. There are different things to worry about besides spelling, grammar, factualness, and coherency. Added to the mix are plot development, characters and character development, setting, and a whole laundry list of other elements that make a novel a novel.

Some methods I’ve researched:

• Notecards This method worked well for me when I was plotting out the story originally, and it might be worth re-visiting in the edits. Take every scene and put it on notecards, and lay them out in order. It gives you a visualization of your novel and makes it easier to see plot holes, or scenes that are just filler. You can also move as you please. Chris Baty (NaNoWriMo founder) advocates for this method in his book No Plot? No Problem!  and he makes a pretty good case for it. I’ll keep it on the list.
• Different Drafts I can’t remember where I read about this method, but your first draft is catching mistakes and correcting them, then a different draft for character development, a different draft for sensory details, a different draft for emotional things, etc. I think this would be useful if you’ve already seen to it that your story is complete and you’re satisfied with the arc.
• Lemony Snicket’s advice His advice is featured on the I Wrote A Novel, Now What? page on the NaNo website. “Put the book aside and listen, for the first time, to your insecurities. Do not pay attention to what they say but to where they are pointing.” I’m a very insecure writer anyway, so the ability to let myself listen to my doubts and the Inner Editor is freeing and encouraging.
• Holly Lisle’s One-Pass Revision I’m sorry, but I don’t think a whole novel can be edited in one pass. I know if you take your time with it and focus, it can work for some people, but definitely not for me. I’m wary of it, and I doubt I’ll ever try it.

I’m mostly positive I’ll be doing a step by step process, and it’s going to be difficult to resist fixing the little things before I fix the big things. A novel isn’t made just by deleting a few commas. I know that I’ll end up needing second opinions, and I plan on sharing with people who aren’t close friends or family first, but they’ll still be people that I’ve come to know and trust as writers.

In the meantime, while I wait for my novel to marinate, I’ve offered my services to fellow NaNo survivors as a second pair of eyes, using my copy editing skills on their novels. It’s a good way to pass the time until it’s time for me to work on my big, huge, scary novel.

And so, I leave you with these words from Oscar Wilde:

This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.

I took some time to reflect on how November went before I started thinking about blogging again. The month ended in a rush that I wasn’t quite prepared for, which included an influx of social events, and unintentionally falling behind on my word count. Bottom line: I got it done, and I have a novel.

It was a tooth and nail fight to cross the finish line (with two hours to spare). I jumped tracks so many times I have to separate out the different things I started and didn’t finish. What I did end up doing though, is adding onto, and finishing, another NaNo novel, which is sort of against the rules, but if there are words for one project, I’m not going to force words that aren’t there. I feel like that’s the most valuable thing I’ve learned this month: if the words aren’t there, don’t force it. If the words come for something else, work on that for a while; inspiration might come afterwards.

I don’t have much else to say on the experience, except to say that I learned a lot abou the kind of writer I am, in terms of method and genre. I’m a mostly solitary writer, with fits of needing word wars and social interaction with others of my kind. It was an enormous help to unload on other Wrimos, and have a little friendly competition in the name of upping the word count. And I like to write fantasy…it cuts out the amount of research I have to do and I like to let my mind wander. I tried not writing it and I just ended up floundering in indecision and research and minutiae that I really didn’t want to deal with.

So now the completed novel sits patiently on my harddrive while I regain perspective and a set of fresh eyes. Then, in about two or three weeks, I’ll start slogging through the re-writes and the edits. And you better believe I’m going to share all of that with you.

Speaking of, I don’t even know how I’m going to tackle the edits. I’m a trained copy editor, but editing a novel is a whole different ball game to editing news articles. For one thing, the scale is completely different 700 word news article versus a 50000 word BEHEMOTH? It’s daunting to say the least.

Also, apparently my body gave out just as soon as the clock switched to Dec. 1: I’m now rocking an almighty cold that makes my head feel like it’s detached from my body, and has me hacking up a lung every half hour. I’m just happy my immune system waited until December to give up.

At this point in the month I’m clueless: I have no idea where I’m going with the plot and with the characters ensconced in the plot. One thing I should probably do is step back and say, “Okay, I’ve come this far, where does this go next?” I know by this time next week I’ll feel a lot better about things and say to myself, “Now was that freak out necessary?”

I’m using any means to push through the awfulness that is always Week 2: Write or Die, writing longhand, closing my eyes and just writing whatever comes to mind concerning the scene.

Hopefully everything comes through in the edits and rewrites in January.

How are you all doing on your wordcounts? Are you just as frustrated with Week 2?

You know, I had a feeling that when NaNo started, I would suddenly not have time to blog. It turns out I was right. Or I should budget my time better, but I see next to no chance of that happening. So.

I think I should explain what happened to me a few days ago. I posted in my wonderful NaNoWriMo Google+ circle that I was having some troubles writing (more trouble than usual a.k.a., I was losing sleep over it) and I got some great advice, from killing a character, to “relax,” to stepping away from it for a while. What happened instead was I started to write whatever I wanted to write, and my mind went back to an idea I’ve been toying with for a while. And guess what happened? The words just started to pour out of me. It was magical.

I distinctly remember my first NaNo, and how much fun I had writing it, because I knew how it began, and I knew how it ended, so I just wrote the middle with no idea how it was going to go. And I had a ball. Even my mother mentioned how much fun I had with the first one (and it’s the only one that’s complete!), and now I just stress out about my NaNo novels. Am I really a pantser at heart? This so goes against my nature, but I’m willing to try it, if it means writing is fun again and I actually finish instead of getting to the climax and stopping.

Considering the plot I started November with, I believe that I plotted myself into a box that I didn’t know how to get out of. So I’ve put the original idea on the back burner, to give it time to boil down to the idea it started as; go in fresh when it’s ready and when I’m ready.

But for now, I’m just going to work on the thing that’s actually working for me.

My goal this year is 80,000 words. I don’t know if this is a psychotic death wish, wishful thinking, or what, but I’m determined to do it.

OK, off I go again!

Hope your NaNo adventures are going well!

I’ve done all the preparing I feel like I can do. I even braved the masses of gawking, Hello!-shouting, Chinese people and went to the supermarket to stock up on the necessities, a.k.a. chocolate. I even found instant coffee, which I guess is a good alternative to the regular thing.

Also, my apartment is the cleanest it has EVER been, which is saying a lot because roommate neglects to clean his sunflower seed shells most of the time.

The plot cards are laid out on their temporary home (my bed) for easy access and reference. The chocolate is handy for the first 1667 reached, an episode of the West Wing is lined up for the second 1667 reached, and the coffee is there should I need it.

80,000 words and a first draft, here I come! (Yep, I set my goal high this year. I have the free time, I might as well make use of it.)

It happened today when Julian’s mom told him to say the wrong word (juicy instead of juice) and he broke down in class, hiccuping and gasping for breath, red face and tears in his eyes. “You told me to say the wrong word. You told me the wrong word,” he said. I tried to comfort him by telling him “juicy” is a word, too, but to no avail. By the end of class he was fine; the only evidence of his breakdown was two spots of pink on his cheeks. I think he was partially embarrassed, partially upset that his mother would mislead him like that, and I’m sure his mom didn’t intentionally tell him the wrong word. I can understand that emotion well. He was fine when he left, cheerful and high fiving and laughing.

Iris (5 years old), the other day, slipped and fell in the bathroom, and split her lip open. I felt so bad when I saw her with her mom, blood on the tissues on the desk and tears in her eyes. All she could do was nod at me when I asked her if she was OK, her bottom lip puffed out and bleeding too much to speak. She watched the class and didn’t say much because it hurt too much, but I almost teared up when I saw her sitting at her desk, pouting and looking forlorn. No one likes to see a child get hurt, least of all when it’s a child who’s normally so happy go lucky and cheerful.

These kids are resilient, that’s for sure. They fall down, they get right back up again.

Jerry (9 years old) cries or pouts quite frequently, mostly when he doesn’t get his way, or when his team loses at a game. For example, just today we played boys vs. girls Hangman and we played twice. The girls won, both times. Jerry started to pout and his face crumpled and we all said (including classmates), that it’s just a game. He would hear none of it. He went back to his desk and pouted until it was time to read.

Gary (5 years old) cries every time he doesn’t get his way, which is quite frequently, because of the number of kids in the class. He wants to read first, he wants to be the first in Telephone, he wants to say the word first. His mom keeps him in line most of the time, but other times he just gets completely out of hand. His mom has to hit him a few times and drag him around to make him cooperate. Which leads me to my next point:

Some of these kids are a bit starved for affection, I feel. A lot of the younger kids (4 or 5 years old) give me hugs and they like to sit on my lap during break time. They want the attention, because while they do get attention from their parents (they’re only children by policy), sometimes it’s not the good kind of attention, especially if a child makes a mistake. I’ve seen a mother give her child a beating because she gave a wrong answer and lost the game for her team, or a father whap his son on the head from behind when he got a translation wrong. It breaks my heart to see parents do that to their child, especially in public. So I make sure to indulge them on break times by letting them use me as a jungle gym, answering their ridiculous questions (“Jessica Teacher, what’s your favorite animal?”) and playing games with them.

It’s upsetting and unsettling (I’ve been here 8.5 months and I’m still not used to that aspect of the culture), and sometimes I’m left speechless by it all, but then one of those little buggers wraps their arms around my neck and asks me to jump five times, and my heart melts.

As I thought about genres and niches in regards to writing, I compared it to choosing a major in college. You don’t want to choose something you’re going to hate. Why pick mathematics when you really want to study art history? You know you’re going to be unhappy with it. Why write historical fiction when you really want to write high fantasy?

This is my problem though: just like in college, I want to try everything. Political science, English lit, philosophy, biology, American history, French, you name it, I wanted to take a class in it. Now, I want to try writing everything. Historical fiction, memoirs, mainstream, literary, hell, maybe even erotica.

It’s a good thing NaNoWriMo is available for those of us who want to dip our feet in all the different genres, so we can test the waters and see what we’re comfortable with, what we like to write, and what won’t bore us to tears before week 2 even starts.

With NaNoWriMo just around the corner (literally!) I still have some things to do, mainly character development, which I’ve been told on several occasions is my weakest area. You’d think after being told I’d learn, but there it is.

I have the “basics” down for the three main characters: what they look like, their jobs, their familial backgrounds, their motivations, external/internal conflicts, and some vices. All of this has come out in writing paragraphs about each of them.

The worksheets everyone suggests work fine for some things, but they never go as in depth as I want them to, and those that have open ended questions are odd questions, like what animal your character is afraid of, or what their favorite food is. I don’t find them useful at all. Perhaps that’s just me, I don’t know.

I still feel like I need more information before I start writing on Monday night, but I don’t know what kind of information. My gut feeling is that as soon as I start writing the characters, more of tidbits will come out and then I won’t have to worry about telling versus showing.

Or maybe I should just write pages and pages in their POV before Monday.

I’m taking suggestions, fellow writers! I promise cookies or crocheted something or other, or pretty photos of China.

—————-
Listening to: Enter The Haggis – The Apothecary

As you can see, I’ve been very busy:

Eureka!

Thanks to some advice from B, and some friends in my invaluable NaNoWriMo Google+ circle, I walked away from my plot and its problems. In the meantime, I crocheted some mittens, worked, had a birthday and caught a cold, in that order. I decided that today would be a good day to get back to my plot and try to figure out why I was having problems making everything come together. I didn’t know if I needed fresh eyes, or if I had truly gone wrong somewhere and needed to go back.

This time I tried notecards and laying them out in some semblance of order, and it’s worked wonders. I like that I can read each card, see the scene in my head and move on to the next one. If something doesn’t feel right, or I feel like it would fit better somewhere else, I pick it up and move it. It’s tactile and flexible; exactly what I need right now. You can’t get this kind of mobility with an outline on a piece of paper, or with a pretend corkboard (although I love Scrivener’s corkboard feature). It’s also highly satisfying to take a discarded notecard, crumple it up, and throw it in the trash.

As I went through and placed the cards, I slowly realized that the problem was not only the plot, but a specific character. He has a major role and his story needs to be told, but I couldn’t figure out how without forcing the issue and potentially damaging what I’d already built. I’m glad I gave it a rest for a few days.

The grid is broken down into thirds, to go with the three act structure. Cards placed next to each other are cause and effect, and cards layered over cards are things happening within the cause and effect. Smaller cards are dialogue snippets, settings, and questions that still need to be answered. Extraneous cards (far left) are still more questions, and scenes that don’t fit anywhere, but I’ve not given up hope on them.

As you can see, I still have a lot of work left. Not only do I need to somehow get to the ending, but I also have to do more character development (this is my weakest area as a writer), prep the Scrivener file, and wrap up my research. Oye, I gotta make a list.

The only downside to this is that I’ve done this all on my bed, as you can see, and I must sleep sometime tonight. China doesn’t have bulletin boards, OK?

—————-
Listening to: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – Painted Sun In Abstract