Ok, when editing a manuscript, how do you “pull back” from being too close to it?  I was reading in Holly Lisle and she wrote that she approaches it like it’s not her work, which is EASY to say, but how do you do that?  It’s even harder when you are keeping track of the new threads that cropped up in the work.

Anyone have some good clues on being close but not TOO close while you edit?  Any tips appreciated.

Yesterday was  a joke.  I was sacked out with serious sinus pain.  Nothing that I’m ALLOWED to take works.  (I’m on coumadin for life, so I have to be extremely careful with my drug interactions.)  Tylenol Arthritis and Claritin 24 didn’t make a dent in the pain.  I finally ran for my daughter’s script (which I’ve had before), at 3am after the ice pack and the cool humidifier didn’t do anything, and it SLIGHTLY relieved the pain.

Today is a clear day.  Sinusitis attacks kill me, particularly on warm and humid days in winter.  Ugh, give me snow and subzero temps!

Anyway, I did my minimum page goal to complete the edit by 2/1/09 (8 pages) , but as ALWAYS I get to wondering how to write when you are in extreme pain.  If it were a pain somewhere else, I’d be fine to grab the manuscript and prop myself up in bed.  But pain in the face/sinus/eye area makes ANY kind of work completely cripping.  What is a good solution?

Maybe there is none.  I just have to slog through the pain and put off the work that’s required.  Ugh.  If I want to be a freelance writer and podcaster, that means I’ll have to resort to the thing I’m not good at: pre-planning.

Another thing I’m wondering on: in the portion I wrote yesterday, my character experiences great, crippling pain.  Hm, maybe I should go back since I have FRESH experience on this and see if the pain rings true…

Ok, for now I have to do the paid work and write my blogs. Later…

Editing is hell, hell, HELL.  Just had to get that off my chest.  back to work…

So I’ve been doing some things today:

-working on my blogs that were due today

-cleaning my office

-playing a little with the kids

-cleaning up the house

-sleeping late

Notice what’s missing?  Notice there is NOTHING in there about editing my novel.  Oh yea, THAT.

Well, I was thinking about it, Christmas Eve and other times and realized here’s the problem:

I’m TERRIFIED.

I mean, augh, what if it sucks?  Why oh why am I pressuring myself like this?  It’s my first novel, it’s allowed to suck or not live up to my own standards because, dammit, it’s my first.  I’ve already got an embryonic concept for my 2nd novel (no, not the sequel to the one in development), and just realized I can maybe combine some other concepts.

But no i have not yet bothered to PRINT.

So here goes…

Ok, I just hit “print”.  Here it comes.  And as I start the rewrite, oh, God, so many questions…

wish me luck…

Ok, I’m reading a book right now, and I’m all KINDS of pissed off at the author because of errors that are KILLING the book’s readability. I’m not going to name her or the book, nor describe them too much. I AM, however, going to detail the list of problems. I want to firstly note that this is not a genre I read a lot (supernatural romance, I guess), but that’s not bothering me at all. The romance is fine, the characters are fine, and the plot is pretty good. Here are problems that I’m going to TRY and avoid as I revise my novel this month:

1. Annoyed from the get-go. TOO many adjectives, adverbs, and descriptions in the first few pages. Oh, yea, and ENTIRELY too much many architectural terms I don’t understand (I’m not good at visualizing the dictionary description) that are not properly illustrated. I don’t care WHAT your protagonist does for a living, I should be able to understand what I’m seeing if it’s key to the story. Oh, yea, and never annoy your readers in the beginning because they’ll just be LOOKING for you to trip up. (I am.)

2. Stop setting up chapter-ending cliff-hangers and then having next chapter start the next day. I keep feeling like it’s that time in college when I drank so much I couldn’t remember all the stuff I did that was REALLY interesting the next day. Really. STOP IT.

3. Stop describing discussions. Really, are you kidding? You’re going to DESCRIBE the dinner conversation and TELL me it “danced around the obvious”??? You could have put me there and let me HEAR IT. (For what’s it worth, this whole section should have been deleted, since you already showed the characters “dancing around the issue” in dialogue. Not done perfectly, but acceptable and way better than THIS.)

4. I’m bored. Seriously, you have set up a very interesting ghost story, and 2 interesting subplots, but you HAVE YET (1/4 of the way in) to give me any meat about ANY of these plots- and you set them up really early! However it is true that you have HAMMERED into my brain about the protagonist’s neurosis, to the point where SHE’S starting to piss me off. I get it! Plot please!

Now that I have flayed this poor author, I really need to remember to be COMPLETELY merciless with my own WIP. REALLY MERCILESS, because I want authors to read MORE of my novels, rather than skip over my name in the aisle.

enough said.

Sucky things are going on in life right now, but I’ve decided to MOVE FORWARD on my novel and other writing things.

These are the things on my to do list:

1. get up EARLY (yes I said EARLY) to spend 30-60 minutes completing worldbuilding. So far, I’ve done this 2 out of 3 days.

2. create a story line every week. Remember when I took the writerstudio.com classes? I HAD to create a plotline weekly. So why not? I’ve done this 2 weeks in a row. It’ll keep me creative

3. looking at writing jobs. I’m doing this daily. Just sent for a certain greeting cards’ writer’s guidelines after reading their pay rates. Also looking at lots of freelance jobs, applying, and I have to write my first query letter for submission to something I’m uniquely qualified for.  (UDPATE: Turns out, I’m uniquely qualified for that greeting card thing too!)

4. GOOD NEWS: sent out my first ever submission on Sunday. It’s for a creative non-fiction piece. Editor told me the style was “interesting”, so it’s already been read. Decisions will be made in January as to who they are including in their anthology.

Moving closer and closer to my goals as a writer. Good for me.