The massive edit

I printed the draft one sided so that I could use the backside for longer passages of writing. There are still some chunks ( at least in the first third) that need quite a bit of work. The first part of the book (30 pages of this draft) is now pretty tight. I still enjoy reading it - it flows well. My wife commented on a few passages being well written. That makes me think that maybe I do have a little writing talent.

A number of factors have delayed the editing, but of late I’ve been making more steady progress. I HOPE that I can get the rest of this edit completed within the next month or so. Though, I’ve come to realize that setting deadlines is sort of pointless. Anyways - odds are (even after publishing) that not many people will read this book - so what’s the point of rushing through this?

Another point: Having 60 pages with all of these edits - I’m worried about losing these pages do to some unforeseen accident - namely some great pitcher of water being spilled on the pages - running the ink and ruining the text. Wouldn’t that be bad? YES - it would.

There are times when I have to force myself to work out a few sections that are particularly rough. I think they’ve become so rough because they were added to over the past drafts - but never blended well together. My first thoughts when hitting these sections is to put the text down, or flip to the next page. Neither are great for getting this book done.

One last point: I find that the dialogue for the most part works well. Beyond a few grammatical points or continuity issues I only modify the dialogue for plot and character development issues

Bring on the Print!

I wrote the initial drafts in WordPad - it comes free with windows. It’s a rich text editor, so it has all the formatting I need. But it has no spell check. I was writing the book on a old stripped down computer. The reason? No internet, no games, no distractions. I put a few albums worth of music on it and left some old vacation photos on there - everything else went poof. So the file had to be moved to the main house computer to be put into Microsoft Word - for print formatting and the dreaded spell check.

The draft came in at over 100,000 words, so the process took quite some time. I did it in little chunks over a few weeks. I didn’t want the computer to lock up, Word to screw up, or me to hit a wrong button and lose a long period’s worth of spell checking. It was a very tedious thing and didn’t want to have to do any of it over.

I also added in a copyright note header on each page - and also page numbers - don’t want to get that mess out of order and try to put it back with no page numbers.

I shrunk the margins to fit everything into 182 letter sized pages - single side printing to allow long edits to be written on the back. After I had printed the first copy (of two) I saw that I could have dropped the text size down - but didn’t want to reprint the copy, nor change it on the second print. As I wanted both copies to be the same on every page.

One copy went to me - the other copy to my wife (my only comprehensive editor). Very early on I read somewhere that most self-published authors use family members for editing. They also said this was a mistake. Then they offered to edit my book - for a fee of course. I can’t afford that - my whole budget for this is a thousand dollars (that will probably go up a bit though). I figure my wife is a good substitute. She’s a great technical writer and was in the process of becoming and English teacher. She’s pretty objective - I’ve told her a few things about the book, but she’s not nearly as involved in the plot or the characters as I am. Thus she’s unable to make the mental leaps to fill voids that I am.

The last catch up post will be forthcoming.

A Long Overdue Update

Clearly in terms of a regular chronicling of the efforts - I have fallen off. This does not necessarily mimic the progress of the GIANT - but as of late there has been a big slow down in the editing. Here I will provide an update as to where the work stands. Then step back to the last update and fill in the gaps. A flashback sequence of sorts.

CURRENT STATUS: Being reviewed by two people (including myself). This is the first comprehensive printed draft of the work.

FLASHBACK: September 2007. I have given up on the idea of having the book published in 2007. The possibility of having a completed manuscript seems unlikely as well. It probably seems best that I keep working at it regularly - no sense in putting pressure on myself to finish something that no one is paying me for. If the thing is primarily for me - then my primary goal should be enjoyment.

Through October and November the editing went. The latter portion of the book is much easier for me to read - I had clearly found my voice when initially writing by that stage of the book. There are certainly other sections where I wonder how that slop was put onto a page. So it sped up - and by the beginning of November I had completed the second full draft of the GIANT.

I will say that this on screen edit was not as complete as it could have been. I knew there would be the printed comprehensive edit - so I left for my future-self particularly tough passages to work out. And while a lot of the stinkers had been worked out, there were definitely some still hanging around.

Look for the assemblage and editing of the printed draft shortly