Draft 5

A whole new draft - Draft 5.

Things are going slower than I thought. I made quite a few markups to the printed version, but it still seems slow. Sometimes it takes me an hour or two to make changes to just one page.

On the bright side though, the GIANT is a much better story for the effort. The first section of the book, which upon reading again I saw needed more explanation, is now more readable and has a greater flow. Hopefully this bodes well for the rest of the changes.

Hand Edit Complete

My latest hand edit is complete. My strategy of moving quickly through the work and making outline notes instead of long blocks of text paid off. For the first time I came away with a good overall sense of what pieces fall into place where. No more wondering if a character had revealed some important fact about his life or if the narrator had explained something to the reader! Instead of having read the passage in question months ago, it was a matter of days - everything was very fresh. I will tackle future hand edits in such a rapid fashion, with the only exception of following the quick edit with a comprehensive follow up edit.

Now its onto the digital edit - I have just short of three months before the end of the year - wouldn't it be great to complete it before 2010? It would, but given my slow history with this, I won't hold my breath.

The Hand Edit Continues

I have moved through the edit of the first section of the GIANT (which is about 20% of the book), and have made a decision. My last hand edit was an intensive affair, where I hand wrote long passages, but it was a slow process. So far, this edit is no different and has been a slow, but productive affair. I feel as though I have made a lot of good changes, but when I move onto the rest of the story, I'm going to change the pace.

There are a lot of plot points and timing issues to remember (I still don't have an outline), so I'm going to move through the rest of the edit as quickly as possible so as to not forget points. Instead of handwriting long passages, I'm going to make more broad suggestions and make the actual changes on the computer. If I have particularly good ideas, I'll write those out, but otherwise I'm going to make this a quick strike sort of affair.

Onto the Next Draft

The GIANT is broken into two sections, and it is clear from the outside edit that the first section needs a fair ammount of work. It has been months since I have read through the entire manuscript, and more than a year since I've held a physical copy of it. Additionally, I have tweeked the plot somewhat, so just a short way into the edit I have significant changes to make.

What I've spent a lot of time focusing on is pulling the reader quickly into the story. Always critical to a story's success (who wants to plow through a boring story by an unknown author?), a good beginning is doubly important to the GIANT to explain the technical structure of the story.

Editor's Comments

I've flipped through the latest manuscript which has my editor's, Stacy, comments. It is quite helpful to see the story through another person's eyes. There have been quite a few, "why did I do that?" revelations on my part.

Stacy left quite a few notes on the pages. I am not a professional writer, nor have I taken more than the required English courses during my educational life, so there are quite a few technial aspects I am not clear on. It's always helpful when someone helps me out in that regard. Stacy also pointed out a few places where my writing style was either confusing, uneeded, or out of place. For example, I started a wealth of sentences with And and But, and an attempt to control pacing I used too many short sentences.

Stacy also provided quite a few big picture comments which shows me where I had not explained the plot and story well enough.

I will begin my next edit (hand) soon.

My editor's comments

I recently met with my editor, Stacy. She's not a profressional editor, but has a lot of writing experience, and more importantly was willing to read the entire manusrcipt. She asked me if I wanted her feedback straight or with a little sugar. Give it to me straight, I say. If this book is going to be ANYTHING, I need honest feedback from every corner.

Overall Stacy said the story is worthwhile and I should pursue publishing (I plan to), but I need to put in a lot of work before that time. The text needs a good amount of technical editing, as the wording is distracting in places now. Part of the story is set in a future world, and Stacy doesn't buy some of the situations and technologies there. She also made good recomendations to set up the story and pull the reader into the world.

Stacy also picked up on my lack of outline and subsequent attempts to change the plot. I had attempted a post-written sort of outline, but clearly it did not help me enough. I plan on during my next draft to write an outline as I go through the edit of the work - hopefully this will help me to keep everything straight in my mind, so that I will be able to keep the story straight for the reader.

I have secured an editor

I suppose I've talked about writing a book to too many people. A friend of mine has asked me to read a draft of it enough that I think she means it. She has offered to do some editing and give me feedback on the draft. All the advice I've read for aspiring writers says to not have friends and family edit your work, but this friend has done a lot of writing, so I'm confident I'll get some good feedback. Additionally, I have no money to pay a professional editor to evaluate the work.

I suppose my lack of entries here is a sign in itself about the lack of progess of the book. It sits and waits for me to get to back to work.

This is Like Work

I'm down to the grit of the story - the parts that STILL aren't worked out. Places where I haven't added enough description, or where the characters are a little off. The description I understand - I now see that as a problem of mine. I tend to gloss over pieces, filling in the details in my mind. But the character stuff bugs me.

A few years ago when this all started the characters were a little different. I have since changed them for the better, but some of their old decisions, motivations, speach, etc. were still there. I thought I would have caught all of that in the last physical edit. Nope.

But - things are starting to shape up. There's big sections that I'm happy with. I've read every word at least four times, so the parts that still excite me and make me want to read more make me happy. I figure if I (the writer) want to read more, someone who hasn't read the book before will want to - that's my hope anyway.

The pace of my edit has slowed down a bit. I was motoring along for several weeks, but other non-book issues have demanded more attention of me lately. I'm tyring to remain focused, but time slips away from me quickly.

Digital Edit Complete

Draft 4a is complete. Now it's on to draft 4b. The titles don't mean much.

I found that I again had to rework the ending a bit. It no longer fit the characters and their personalities. Nor did it fit my revised (slightly) plot. The story is better now though. Every time I revise, it gets better. Which makes me wonder if I will ever stop revising. Will there be a point where I am satisfied?

I hope.

Here's my new plan. I'm going to do another digital edit. Hand it off to my wife. She'll make suggestions on a physical print. I'll probably make some markups on those pages and once again make digital revisions. From there I may have a friend or relative take a look at it. Then probably make a few more changes. I hope at that point its ready to head off to some agents. My new thinking is to have this commercially published (assuming there are interested parties). If not I'll give self publishing a shot. I've put so much effort into this, I want to see something come of it. Or maybe I'll publish it online. We shall see.