Archive for the ‘editing’ Tag
That Face When…
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: editing, plotting, writing, writing life
Leave a comment You realize you need to completely replot your novel, because you’re at 40,000 words and have run out of things to do…and it’s supposed to be an 80,000-word book.
Every day for the past, oh, month or so, I have opened up my work in progress, the story of Beta Tanaka and Danae Childress’s courtship, and stared at it for an hour or so. Adding a sentence here, taking one out there. And I haven’t substantially changed the total number of words.
This week, I had an epiphany. I’ve told all the story I had. What I really need to do is expand the story, which is going to require expanding the plot, which is going to affect the character arcs and the relationship arc.
So I might as well just come out and say it—I need to replot the danged book. Luckily I’ve had a couple of ideas already that not only expand the external plot, but also both protagonists’ character arcs. They also make the relationship issues (and resolution of those issues) more realistic and satisfying. Well, satisfying to me at least.
So, for those of you waiting on Beta Test/Beta’s Test/Testing Beta (or whatever the final title turns out to be), I’m sorry, it’s gong to be a while longer.
But I think it’s going to be a much better book.
Thanks for your patience,
Val
Why Bronchitis Stinks on Ice
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: editing, Finishing, real life, writing
Leave a comment After taking some time off for the holidays (and the mandatory shutdown at the day job), I lost two and a half weeks of January to a cold that went bronchitis. And that was me, the one who watches like a hawk at the first sign of a cold, because they almost always try to settle in my lungs (walking pneumonia back in high school left me susceptible).
It’s always worrying when, 28 hours after the first weird feeling, your doctor listens to your chest and says, “Wow. You just earned yourself a chest x-ray.” Luckily, said x-ray ruled out pneumonia, but showed a nasty case of bronchitis. Yay? Antibiotics and an inhaled steroid to get the coughing to work better, and I was on my way.
The constant coughing wasn’t too much of a problem (cough syrup kept it to a minimum and the Albuterol made it more effective), the rumbling and crackling when trying to breathe (or sleep) was annoying, but the bone-deep fatigue—probably from not being able to breathe properly—kept me from doing much of anything for two weeks. Do. Not. Like.
However, azithromycin is amazing. Six pills over five days and I’m back to me. Like. Very much.
So, now back to our regularly scheduled writing: finishing up the Kindness of Strangers novella to round out the first Strike Force anthology (Open Mike at Club Bebop, Getting Lucky, and Kindness of Strangers), plus telling the slightly skewed Sleeping Beauty story of Ekaterina Avondale’s parents, Dane Avondale (Hero of Ararat) and Aurora Ivanov (the Dragonkiller).
With luck, which hasn’t been in large supply for writing in the last few weeks, I should be able to get them edited, formatted, covered, and up for sale by the end of February (and I probably just jinxed myself by setting a deadline).
I’m also planning to release my first historical romance at the end of this month, under the pen name Jane Reynolds. Look for A Ruined Woman in about a week.
And then I can start on the writing I had planned for this year, LOL.
Update — No, I have not entirely abandoned my website
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: cancer, editing, life, publishing, writing
Leave a comment After recovering from the breast cancer reconstruction that refused to cooperate (no, I will not go into details as I don’t want to freak out anyone; let’s just say I burned off some bad karma), I dove into The Ocasek Opportunity, the story of Tasha’s little brother and how he saved two civilizations from the boogeyman aliens.
Currently, it’s resting before I start editing the first draft into a book.
Now I’m fighting with Kindness of Strangers, the Ganymede Survivors story of Colonel Singh and the elusive Chandra Ramasamy.
And I’ve got one more editing pass on The Unique Solution–the redemption of the evil twin from Blade’s Edge–before I can get it published.
I’ve written more in the last year than in the previous several, just none of it on my website/blog. So now you know.
Thanks,
Val
The Importance of Syntax
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: editing, Geekery, grammar, writing
Leave a comment Way back in the nineteen-mumbles, I took a programming class. I was in the very last class at my university that started Fortran programming on punch cards. Yes, punch cards. You can buy them on Etsy as antiques. The professor thought we should know how bad his generation had it so we would appreciate dumb terminals (insert eye-roll here).
At any rate, the mini-mainframe system was so amazingly primitive that your program output might be a single sheet of paper (with tractor-feed margins still attached, of course) that bore the message “Syntax Error”. Which meant you had screwed up in punching one or more of your cards and the resulting code would not compile correctly, let alone run and give you the results you had to turn in for a grade.
It’s an excellent catch-all message that can be used to describe so many grammatical errors in English:
“Try and do it” = syntax error
“Graduated college” = syntax error
“Happened on accident” = syntax error
“Your so right” = syntax error
“I could care less” = syntax error
Luckily, English is extremely redundant and the human brain is highly resilient (unlike computers). We can interpret statements full of syntax errors, although a personal opinion of the speaker/writer’s intelligence might be revised down in the process. Unless English is not his or her first language, of course; syntax can be tricky to port between different grammatical systems.
For example, French uses postpositions, positional-descriptive words that are placed after a noun phrase, as well as prepositions. When French is transliterated to English, you sometimes get sentences that sound like Yoda came up with them — full of syntax errors…in English.
Genre fiction publishers are reluctant to include semicolons in books, because they believe (or so my editors have said) readers can’t understand them. Not fair, really, to either readers or the semicolon, but there it is. The result, if the writer is using the punctuation correctly, is unnecessarily choppy prose or (shudder) comma splices without appropriate conjunctions. In other words, syntax errors.
Many syntax errors are so common they’ve become idiom (a nice way of saying everybody does it so grammarians have given up), which is why idiom is almost untranslatable — it didn’t actually make sense in the first place, so moving it into a different language is tricky at best.
Study your syntax, be aware when you’re using idiom. Control it; use it for effect and not just because it’s the first thing that comes to mind. Just because everyone is doing it does not make it right, or good, or readable twenty years from now when idiom and syntax have moved on.
If you do that, you’re less likely to include the word “hassle” (origin in the late 19th century, rarely used before 1950) six times in a Regency romance novel.
Back to the word mine….
Val
How To Know You’re Doing It Right
The first time I held a job with the word “Editor” in the title was ninth grade–I was chosen as editor of my junior high school newspaper. Primarily it meant I typeset the columns, by hand, on an IBM Selectric.
I also held various editor jobs on my college newspaper over the course of five or six years. (I was on the 9-year plan for a bachelor degree, because I had trouble choosing which one I wanted; that’s how I ended up with enough credits for a doctorate, and minors in math, physics, English, history and music.)
When I decided to learn how to write novels, I studied characterization, point of view, plot structure, and all that other good stuff, but I always figured I sort of knew how to edit. I had all that experience with “editor” in the job titles, but then, writing fiction makes you neurotic. I don’t know why. It just does.
I signed up for an online class about self-editing last month, with lessons based on the James Scott Bell Writers Digest book, Revision and Self-Editing.
The very first exercise we had to do was to read the work in progress from beginning to end like a reader; we weren’t allowed to edit or rewrite anything during the read, just make a note of it.
My notes basically said I needed to rewrite the second half of the book (on page 137 I wrote, “this is where it falls apart, rewrite from this scene”), because I realized about about the mid-point that it had the wrong protagonist; it was really her story, not his.
But other than that, I can heave a sigh of relief, because I found out I’ve been doing it right, going for tightness and coherence of story over interesting side trips into backstory or fabulous conversations that don’t quite move the plot forward.
I can describe the hero’s and heroine’s character arcs in one sentence, name the main turning points of the story, and even describe how the last scene mirrors the first scene of the book. Writing the synopsis took about fifteen minutes.
It’s a good feeling, to have someone else verify you’re going it right.
