Time to Spare

It seems that lately, ever since the Christmas season is over, I've had tons of time to spare. I think that it's something about how busy we are that time of the year, and I'm not quite used to all of the blank spots on the calender yet. I've actually done a lot more editing on Blue Flames since my last post, but I just couldn't find the time to be interested enough to sit down and type out this post. So far I've gotten 58 pages edited into the second draft - I've been keeping a tracksheet in my writer's notebook with the date, the number of pages, and which edit it is.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how many drafts it will actually take to finish the book, but, I'm thinking, that after this one, I'll still have two more left. I could be wrong, and only need one more edit, but I guess we'll see about that. After the second draft is complete, I'm going to give it to a couple of people to read - I still haven't let anybody else see it yet because it's really pretty bad.

I don't know if I've said it on here before or not, but this novel was written mostly in November 2010, for NaNoWriMo. That is the challenge to write 50k words in the month of November. It's not really as bad as it seems though. I did a lot of word padding during November; little tricks here and there that I added in just to boost my word count. Even though I was sure that it would need edited out later. **Hangs head**

A lot of people actually do that in November; mostly because they wouldn't be able to complete it with all of their holiday preparations, cooking, baking, and anything else that needs done in November (like general living). I didn't do it as bad as some other people did, only a couple of random spots in the book, with one little trick (no contractions; do not instead of don't, should not instead of shouldn't, etc, etc, etc.)

There are a lot worse tricks in the book than that one, and, personally, it doesn't bother me that much that I did that. Mostly what I was having trouble with was the descriptions. I described everything to the best of my ability, which gave me quite a bit of padding. What they don't actually tell you though, about descriptive writing, is that it's not always a good thing.

People always say to describe everything to the fullest extent possible. I've found myself, however, in the editing process, going back and editing out a whole lot of the describing words that I used in the first place. When you actually read, out loud, a sentence that has been written in this way, it just starts to sound funny. Instead of a smooth flowing sentence in which all of the words seem to work together, you end up with a choppy sentence that is almost annoying to read.

Editing out all of those excess words helps that tremendously. Now, one more thing before I leave. When it does actually come time to edit your novel, don't be afraid to cut stuff. In the beginning I was totally obsessing over what needed to go, and what needed to replace it, if anything. Now that I've gotten about a quarter of the way through my book, I realize that it doesn't matter as much as you think it does in the very beginning. I just work on creating flowing sentences that flow together, and paragraphs that pull you into the next section or chapter. Now for my closing words. Go write something!!