Clarion Write-a-Thon: 10 Days and Counting
Photo by Duboix on morguefile.com.
[dc]T[/dc]he Clarion Write-a-Thon ends in ten days, and I have about fifteen hours of editing to finish in that time.
Not too difficult, that is really only about an hour and a half per day, which is not much more than my daily hour goal.
More importantly, I have fewer than eight chapters to get through. It is possible I will finish with the book itself before hitting my goal of 45 hours, but that doesn’t mean I will just stop. I will hit that mark, even if I have to go back and tweak a few things. I’m sure just running spell check on an 80 thousand word story will take up plenty of time.
Getting back into the groove with the new laptop took a few days, but it is going smoothly. I really like the keyboard on my MacBook Pro, which is always a plus. OpenOffice has made things much easier as well. For one, it doesn’t crash like Microsoft Word would (it just couldn’t handle documents with tens of thousands of words).
The live spell-check in OpenOffice actually works too, which is a major blessing. Like the crashes, Microsoft Word couldn’t handle live spell-checking for documents as large as my novel.
On the analogue side of editing, I have been much better about reading aloud while editing. This is the best editing ‘trick’ I can recommend. I became accustomed to reading my writing aloud because of my podcasts, mainly the sketches I would write for Ginger and the Geek.
Back when I had a weekly freelance writing gig, I used a text-to-speech program to help with editing. I was responsible for three to four business stories a week (usually only a few hundred words), so I was under a time crunch.
Using the text-to-speech program forced me to slow down my reading–editing can be a challenge when you are a fast reader and a fast typist. Everything becomes a blur, and my mind mentally inserts the correct word at times, even if its not there.
In terms of story, I made some major changes, but for the better (especially in regards to beefing up one of my main characters, and giving her more depth). Most of the changes affect the ‘world building’ as I fine-tuned some of the world’s mythology and history. I had a lot of scatter shot stuff in the previous draft, and one of my beta readers pointed it out. Instead of featuring so many different aspects, I just built upon what I already had and made them stronger—which helps the story, because I have to figure out how to tie it all together.
I also seem to be rather fond of short paragraphs in this draft.
Yes.
Like a single word.
Maybe two.
I don’t use them all the time, mainly for dramatic or comedic timing.
Yes, comedic timing. There are plenty of jokes and absurd humor in this story, and I keep adding more (and subtracting even more).
However, some of my biggest edits, and changes, are yet to come. The ending needs the most work.
But isn’t that always the case?
Daniel J. Hogan is a single word. Maybe two. Follow him on Twitter, @danieljhogan.
