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Excerpts from the Editing Journal

It's Friday, and -- wow -- I'm happy to say that I met all of this week's writing goals. Woah. I think setting weekly goals works well for me. I've often had issues setting concrete goals with definite deadlines. Somehow I end up getting things done, but often in a haphazard, frantic manner. I have a good picture in my head of where I want to end up -- but the baby steps between here and there are often hard to visualize. If I can plan week by week, I can make better progress.

 I also finished Edit Round 3 on The Book and have started ER4. At 103,951 words, it still needs some serious trimming. My goal is to get it below 100k. Then what? I'm avoiding answering that question, at least for now. Like with drafting, I've found that I edit better when I don't worry about the future.

 I've discovered some good editing strategies. I've outlined, made a "Changes to be made" doc, kept "Discarded and alternate material" in another doc, and tracked my progress using Excel. (I have a weird love of graphs.) But the best thing I've done was start an editing journal.

 The journal helps me keep track of time, progress, and goals. It also lets me mouth off my inner editing angst. I don't bother with grammar and I certainly don't give a shit about propriety. :) I didn't expect to have fun journaling about editing. Keeping a record of my progress gives me insight into my own writing process, and hopefully will help me be more aware of my own flaws and strengths.

 Just for fun, my two favorite excerpts from the editing journal:

 "Unnecessary commas are sprouting all over this document"

 "The thought of tackling this second half keeps stalking me...like a clown with an axe."

 In other news, I'm flipping the eff out over Partials by Dan Wells, which I got on my NOOK for PC as a part of this deal/cover reveal. And when I say "flipping out," I mean the "I'm going to re-read this every month and bully all of my friends into buying it because OMG." It's a post-apocalyptic YA title. I think my favorite thing about Partials is that Kira is the strongest protagonist I've ever read. It was cool to read her struggling between her sense of ethics and her scientific curiosity. Actually, scrap that. My favorite part is that it doesn't play by the same rules as a lot of YA. Many of the annoying tropes I dislike aren't there, and when you say "raise the motherf/ing stakes," it's not afraid to go there and do it BIG.

So, yeah. Put that on your TBR list. 
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Comments

  1. AlyssaSat Jun 29, 03:08:00 PM CDT

    An editing journal sounds like fun. And I've seen Partials around a lot lately... I definitely have to check it out!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. LauraSat Jun 29, 09:59:00 PM CDT

      It lets me put the fun back in work more than I normally do. Then again, I'm easy to amuse.

      Doooo iiitttt! Haha. I will also say that I like post-apocalyptic and science fiction, and one of the things I loved about Partials is the focus on science. If that's not your thing, you might not like it as much as I did, but it's worth reading for all the other bits. :)

      Delete

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