Sunday 21 June 2009

Steady Edit

Managed 2000 words today on the editing front – wow! Actually that does feel like a huge achievement, so I will not be too harsh on myself, although I am still on chapter five. It’s like the chapter which refuses to get off the stage. Six pages left to go of it, but I can’t carry on now, not if I intend to get up for work tomorrow.

I have decided to try at least to stop being over-critical with the editing and to start just plain old writing again. My editing is mainly more rewriting than editing anyway – what I am mostly doing is going over paragraphs and making them flow better – in most cases this means a whole rejig, hence taking so much time. So it is nice to cut loose and just go where the words take me. This morning they were taking me to the delete button mostly, and I had a short paddy around 2pm when I thought I couldn’t write for toffee, but by 7pm I had rewritten around seven pages and everything suddenly seemed brighter.

I then re-read the whole thing up to that point in chapter five, just to see how it all held up, and that also felt good. So that is 22,467 words I am happy with so far. Not bad! I am ignoring how far there is to go yet, and my goal of August. If I think of all that I might wibble into my pillow.

Even though I have said on my profile that my aim is to get this ready to go for August, my real goal is for September, my birthday month. I absolutely refuse to get another year older without having completed this. I wrote the actual story a while ago now – September 2007 to February 2008 I think it was – and I can’t believe I am still not happy enough with it to let people read the whole thing. I know there have been ups and downs money wise (and career wise and home wise and generally everything wise) but this part is taking me far longer than the actual original writing! Madness. I obviously spend far too long talking in the bathroom mirror pretending I am being interviewed by Jonathon Ross as the next big author person. Ahem. But it is so much fun!

6 comments:

Andrea Eames said...

Hi Jayne! I just wanted to stop by and say thank you so much for your lovely comment. And good luck with the editing process - hellish, isn't it? ;)

A xx

Law and Order said...

I've been following your progress and as far as I'm concerned you're doing marvelous!

Shaylen Maxwell said...

I'm in the same boat with all my editing, unfortunately. It's a lot of improving the flow. Extremely time consuming stuff, although it's improved any writing I've been producing substantially (& thus probably reducing how much future editing I'll have to do). And yet, still, I find myself longing to just -write- again, not be so caught up in the process.

Good luck finishing the rest of the chapter! :-D

Jayne said...

Hi Cat (or A!). Thank you so much for stopping by - very nice to see you here. And cheers for the good wishes re: editing - much more painful than writing the darn thing in the first place!

Jayne said...

Hi AW! Your encouragement is so much appreciated - even the word 'progress' in your comment is encouraging - I rarely feel like I am making any progress at all, so to hear you say it makes me stop and think hm - yes, maybe!

Jayne said...

Hello Shaylen, thank you so much for popping by and nice to hear you are also in the same boat (shuffles over to give you room and hand you a cool refreshing drink). Although in a way editing is fascinating - the way suddenly a paragraph scrubs up and shines - it is so very painful, and slow. I much prefered the initial writing - but perhaps that is me looking back with rose-coloured glasses firmly on. Blank sheets of paper can be terrifying too!

Thanks for the good luck wishes - have moved on to chapter six now, but no doubt will return to poke again at chapter five here and there!