Repurposeful

I'm always looking for ways to reuse things. For example, I like to recycle old dryer sheets in a couple of ways (wrapping for fragile Christmas ornaments, stacked as batting for mug mats, stitched into a pocket and filled with dried lavender or rose petals as a quickie mini-sachet, etc.) so I don't throw them away after I use them.

My guy hates this. This is primarily because sometimes the used sheets fall onto the tile floor in the laundry room and act like banana peels underfoot, but also because there is no really tidy way to store a lot of crumpled up sheets. I was sticking them in plastic bag hanging by the dryer first, but evidently this was too technical for anyone else to remember to do. My guy wanted me to stop saving them; I was just as determined to keep doing it. Then one day I had an empty tissue box I wanted to reuse in some way and the lightbulb went off.

Now when I take a used sheet out of the dryer I pop it in the empty tissue box I leave on top of the dryer. When the box is full I put it in my recycling cabinet, take out another empty tissue box and start over. I get to save the sheets, everyone remembers to use the box, storing them takes up less space and best of all my guy is happy now.

Sometimes when you're writing you come up with a character, scene or plot element that seems so great but ultimately doesn't work for the editor (or the story and you) and bites the dust during the editing process. I have never liked throwing away these dust biters; often they are the victims of space constraints, differing opinions or other edits that render them unnecessary. Sometimes you can rework them back into the story -- Chapter 24 of my Disenchanted & Co., for example, was originally the novel's prologue -- but most often they need to be deleted entirely.

You don't have to erase them permanently, however, if you set up a Repurposing file for your story discards. This can be an electronic or paper file folder where you stick the stuff you have to toss. I set up a file for every book I write as [Story Title] Cut Notes to which I save anything significant that is removed from the manuscript, and keep them all under one folder which I often raid when I need ideas or want to repurpose something into another story.

Draftback

Draftback is a Chrome extension that allows you to see what edits and revisions you've made while working in Google Docs. I found it via author Jeff Somer's hilarious post about it here (and personally I agree with everything he said about the idea of recording yourself editing a doc for vanity purposes.)

The reason I'm still posting about it is for the benefit of collaborating writers who work online together. Using this could save tons of time for writing partners who can use it to see what changes have been made by the other partner versus telling them via lengthy e-mails, writing up change notes, etc. I think this might also prove helpful to indie writers who want to work online with their editors. This could also be a pretty decent teaching tool for editing, particularly with students who can follow along and see how the process works.

Edit as You Go

Now that I'm working on shorter projects for my copywriting and ghost gigs lately I've begun editing my work a bit differently. Since many of you are interested in editing discussion, and I like how it's working out so much, I thought I'd share what I've changed to see if it might help any of you.

To give you the short version of my standard editing process, I write new material, perform a quick, one-pass edit on it on the same day, and then wait until I've finished the entire project before I perform another, more intensive three-stage edit of the complete work.

The reasons for this approach are: a) it allows me to write forward at a steady pace instead of endlessly backtracking over the work, b) it evolved naturally over thirty years of writing fiction under deadlines, and helps me keep them, and C) the writer me and the editor me pretty much hate each other, so not allowing them to work together prevents chaos, doubt, fear, and sometimes all-out war (and yes, I know how crazy that sounds, but these two sides of my personality want to be in constant conflict, so keeping them separated as much as possible is imperative.) I also usually have at least three months to write a novel, so I save the final weeks for the intensive editing of the complete work.

When I began copywriting I had to say good-bye to that luxury of time; at present my longest deadline is one week after I receive an assignment. Since it can take me the entire seven days to finish the project, I had to change the way I edit to an as-you-go process, which works for me like this:

First day: Write new material and one-pass edit for spelling and grammar immediately when I finish.

Second day: Edit the previous day's material for content and style, write new material, perform another one-pass edit on the entire work.

Third through Sixth day: repeat what I did on the first and second day (I also try to finish the writing by the sixth day.)

Seventh day: Finish writing the project (if needed) and perform a final intensive edit on the complete work.

At first I didn't like starting out a writing session with editing; I really do prefer to write first and edit second. But the time limitations of my assignments have put my internal editor on a very short leash; I know I have only a week to get the work done so I don't indulge in internal creative clashes. Thus I think having a deadline is integral to making this approach work, so if you're using it on something for which you don't have a deadline, set one for yourself first and stick to it.

The other drawback to this method is the daily backtracking over previous work, which can tempt you to fall into a backtrack and rewrite loop that prevents you from producing new words. If that's an issue for you, I recommend always writing first no matter what day you're on, then hit the editing phase only after you've reached your goal for new words.

Smart Edit Goes Pro

Last summer I discovered a freeware editing program called SmartEdit, which analyzes any text you feed to it and provides lists of and stats on adverbs, clichés, repeated words and other problematic content with the text. The program was so useful that ever since I've been recommending it to other writers.

In December SmartEdit went pro, and while it is still available for a ten-day free trial, a license to use the program beyond that now costs $69.95. While I wish there was still a freeware version available for writers who have no funds, I understand that the developer has to earn a living, too. The real question for me was, is the pro version worth the investment? I decided to buy a license, put the program through its paces and find out.

First, the differences between the two programs; the freeware version of SmartEdit checked:

Repeated Phrases List
Repeated Words List
Adverb Usage List
Monitored Words List
Cliché List

The pro Version of SmartEdit checks:

Repeated Phrases List
Repeated Words List
Adverb Usage List
Monitored Words List
Dialog Tag Counter
Cliché List
Separate Dialog & Prose Checks
Misused Word List
Foreign Phrase Usage List
Profanity Usage List
Suspect Punctuation List
Proper Nouns List
Acronyms List
Sentence Start List
Sentence Length Graph
Smart & Straight Quote Checker
Dash and Hyphen Checker
Word, Character & Page Count

One thing I have to note here is that I did fry the computer on which I had downloaded the old freeware version so I can't pull up the old program to double-check if there was anything else it did; I'm going by the notes I put together for last summer's post on it.

The first thing I noticed as I started up the pro version is that while the basic layout is still the same the program looks much more polished and professional and (obviously) has more options to offer. SmartEdit's scans can be fine-tuned to suit your needs, and also may serve more than one purpose. In addition to searching out problem areas, you can use the program to edit anything from a scene to an entire manuscript in one shot, discover what as well as where your weed words, echoes and other writing weaknesses are, and even create a style sheet for your story.

As before when I test drove the freeware version I decided to feed SmartEdit pro the manuscript for Taken by Night, which was my 50K NaNoWriMo novel and a story that hasn't been edited by anyone but me with the daily edits I did while writing it. I didn't refine any of the scan perameters on the first pass in order to get back the most comprehensive report, and the first report was 210 pages long (which I reduced to 51 pages after eliminating info like all the words and phrases I had repeated only twice, which are reported as a single column.)

As with the freeware version I learned a lot from the scan. The top five phrases I repeated most often were one of the (33 times), out of the (32 times), the rest of (29 times) in front of (17 times) and in the park (16 times.) These are all phrases I would hunt down and weed out as much as possible, along with my individual weed words (i.e. 87 eyes, 41 doors, 39 nods and 31 voices.)

The rest of the report provided lots of new and interesting data for me, too. For example, the scan identified fourteen different words I used that were either profanity or potentially offensive (all intentional and fine with me, but good to know in the event I want to put together a PG version of the ms. to use as a school seminar teaching tool.) My adverb usage report was nine pages long, and while I don't follow that Absolutely No Adverbs Whatsoever rule that seems a bit excessive. I need to take a hard look at my adverb usage during the final edit of the ms. and see if I can trim that down. I also started 304 sentences with She, 264 with The, and 253 with I; it surprised me that those were my top three sentence starters. I put a space in front of a dash 24 different times (typing style preference of mine, and one that most of my editors tolerate) and made one punctuation error by putting a space before a comma (which I do need to fix.) If you'd like to see a copy of the full scan report, I've uploaded it in .pdf format here.

SmartEdit is ideal for me to use as part of my full ms. edit; I'll be working it into my process by running a scan as soon as I finished the first complete draft. I also intend to use it to work on eliminating some of my weed word bad habits as well as simplifying the creation of my own style sheets and foreign language glossaries.

The one major issue I have with SmartEdit is that it's only available for Windows; for now you Mac and Linux users are out of luck (the developer notes that a Mac version may be possible in the future.) I have Windows so it doesn't affect me, but I know plenty of writers who are devoted to their Macs. Since this program is geared specifically toward us I think it should be available to all writers, not just the Windows users.

The freeware version of SmartEdit was a useful editing tool; the pro version is even better, and I think every serious writer should take it for a test drive. You simply can't compile this much information on your own without a great deal of tedious searching and list-making. Even with close attention you will probably miss half of the data SmartEdit can compile for you with a single click. What the program doesn't replace is your internal editor; it's still up to you to analyze the scan results, make the appropriate story decisions and apply that to your manuscript. The nice thing about this program is that it's a good teaching resource for new writers who want to learn what to look for as well as what to think about when they are writing in order to get their manuscripts up to professional level.

Bottom line, is it worth the purchase price? I say yes, absolutely.

More on Smart Edit

Last week I mentioned the freeware program Smart Edit as a potential helper for writers who want to improve their editing skills. Since I can always use that, I decided to give it a personal test drive and downloaded it with no problems.

Rather than test it on a manuscript I've worked on with a professional editor (which tend to be pretty clean) I thought a better test run would be to use it to scan one of my freebie e-books, which are edited solely by me. I first converted the .docx file for Dark of Heart to text format -- the program accepts .rtf and text files -- and opened it in the program (the manuscript text appears in the center window on the program screen.) I then hit the Scan Now Icon and let it run.



The program finished scanning the novella in about thirty seconds, and gave me several windows of information with different tabs: Cliches and Dialogue Tags in the left window, Repeated Phrases and Repeated Words in the right window, and Monitored Words and Adverbs in the bottom window (to see another, larger screen shot of my file in the program, click here.) Double click on any of the words in any of the lists and the program takes you to the first time you've used it (at which point you can delete the offending phrase and move on to the next instance of use. You do have to delete or change the phrase before you can double-click to move on to the next one.) I also discovered I could save the scan report, open it in Word and print out a copy, which was really handy as the tabbed windows with the info are small and take awhile to scroll.

The scan report came back with 20 different cliches and the number of times I used them in the novella. Apparently I'm very fond of "hands on" as I used that seven times, and "get out of here" showed up twice. The remaining eighteen phrases were only used once, and I know most of them were used in dialogue lines, so I think I did fairly well there (but if I'd had this program while I was editing the novella, I definitely would have weeded out some of those "hands on".)

I thought I also fared well on dialogue tags; I used "said" 118 times, "thought" 51 times, "told" 43 times, "asked" 28 times and "called" 26 times; all of which I think are perfectly acceptable tags (I don't belong to the school of You Must Only Use Said.) What I didn't like seeing were the 27 times I used "nodded", the 13 times I used "added" and the 11 times I used "grinned"; those are not words I like to use as frequent dialogue tags and I would have yanked them out (and I am going to look over the ms. for exactly where I used "nodded" because I don't think I used it specifically as a dialogue tag; it was probably a physical action phrase to replace one, which I'm prone to do when I get tired of said.)

I did so-so on repeated phrases; my biggest offenders were "one of the" (32 times) and "as soon as" (20 times). My single words with the most repeats surprised me; other than the main character's names (which I think should be at the top of the list) I used the word "down" 122 times, "like" 121 times, "didn't" 116 times, "before" 112 times and "could" 103 times. Two of my ongoing problematic weed words, "eyes" and "door" both came in at 37 repeats which was less than I expected but more than I liked seeing.

The one list that didn't bother me much were the adverbs I used; I didn't have that many in the novella and I'm not allergic to any of the others I used. I know there are writers who spit on adverbs and won't let a single one sully their prose; I never got that memo so I think they can be used sparingly. One thing I did want to mention is that the adverb list never printed out on the scan report, so that may be a minor bug in the program.

You can edit the words and phrases lists that the program uses for scans; you click on "Edit Lists" and when the smaller options screen appears you pick the tab for the list you want to edit to remove or add anything you want to that portion of the scan (which you can see in this screenshot.) You can also customize your scans as to what you specifically want to search for by checking or unchecking the boxes in the Scan Options window (which you can see in this screenshot.)

Smart Edit won't ever replace a real live editor, and it won't take the job of editing completely off your hands. But I do think it can be helpful for analysis purposes, not only for finding problem words and phrases you may have missed but also by identifying the ones that we as writers are prone to regularly overuse or misuse.

Editing Ever Afters

Thanks to NaNoWriMo, writers around the planet wrote 3,073,723,493 new words during the month of November 2011. If you divide that by 50K, that's more than sixty-one thousand novels. That just blows my mind.

Most of these new novels will probably need to be edited and corrected, and will have significant portions that require rewriting and revising. Which is why we should probably designate the months of December, January and February as The International Fix the Book Festival (in reality there is a NaNoEdMo, which takes place in March, details for which you can read about here.)

As soon as I'm finished writing a novel, I do take some time off to recharge before I do my book-length edit. These days I try to give myself at least two weeks downtime, but if that's not possible I shoot for a minimum of 48 hours. During my downtime I devote myself to making my writer side part ways with the book. Which means I don't look it, I don't check anything, and I definitely try very hard not to think about it.

The break between writing and editing is important to my process, not just to refill the well but to put a little distance between me and a story I've been living with and working on daily for weeks and months and even years. It also allows me to shift from storyteller to self-editor, also imperative if I'm going to edit as objectively as I can.

I usually have no problem separating from a book once I've wrapped up the writing end of it. Crossing the finish line is a good feeling most of the time -- there's a lot of satisfaction to be had simply by getting the job done -- but occasionally that feeling doesn't happen, at which point it's more important than ever that I give myself some time away from the novel.

99% of the time I think these negative feelings are caused by doubt or worry over another factor, like concern over the quality of the writing, the actual chances of selling it, and/or what everyone will think about it (that one regularly strikes first-time novelists.) For pros it can be caused by something like a new editor, or a change of publishers, or the first book in a new series.

When it happens to me, I start to question myself, and of course I blame the writing because that's right in front of me and feels like the source of the negativity. I start having these radical urges that tell me to gut the manuscript, or start over, or cancel the contract, or give up Publishing altogether and go into the quilt business.

This is another reason why I think that break between writing and editing is so necessary. Post-novel, writers can at times be like little kids suffering from separation anxiety. Some of us get scared and don't want to let go.

Once I feel like my emotions aren't going to drag me and my manuscript under the bed and keep us there until next Christmas, I set up an editing schedule. Because I do a complete pass of the full manuscript, I divide the work into chapters starting at the beginning. Unless I'm under a severe time crunch, I generally don't edit more than three or four chapters a day, nor do I edit less than two. Editing too much of the book in one session can cause me to rush the reading and miss things I should have caught; editing too little of the book makes me more prone to linger and overthink and second-guess.

A few years back I wrote a blog post that detailed in general how I edit, and that really hasn't changed. I think these days I'm a better proof-reader, simply because I've spent so many years proofing manuscripts. I'll still use spell-check once I've finished typing in all my corrections, but my days of multiple spell-checks of any manuscript are over (and this is primarily due to Microsoft making it too wonky to be useful.)

All of this is not to say that you have to edit your novel as I do mine. Just as writing is a process unique to the writer, so is editing. I'd try any advice that you think might work well for you, but don't be afraid to evolve your own approach, either. You may find yourself editing happily ever after each book you write, and that's the sort of HEA we all want.

Related links: Carrie Kei Heim Binas's blog post on using Wordle as an editing tool ~ Do You Copy? Tips on Copy Editing Your Own Work by Janice Hardy ~ Proofreading and Editing Tips: a compilation of advice from experienced proofreaders and editors

Story Lite

Geoff Davis's Story Lite is a "free flexible text and image editor with multiple editing boxes, unique layout, 3D zoom and color effects." The web site has two excellent demo videos showing the program in action as well as more info about how to use the freeware and even a competition with two prizes for best use of the program. (OS: Windows, Mac. Designer notes that Linux version is coming soon.)

I've been looking for a program that can help me do more on-screen editing, and I was impressed by the designer's web site, so I decided to give this one a personal test drive. Downloading the Windows .exe file, which was 18.9 MB, took about ninety seconds over broadband. Installing was also a no-brainer and didn't take long, maybe a minute (I didn't write down the figure for memory requirement, but I think it requires around 81 MB disk space to install and run the program.) I went right into the program and started to play (click on any image that follows to see larger version):



This is pretty much what the start up screen looks like (I tinkered a bit with the defaults for the box borders and background color.) One thing I decided that immediately had to go was the little info map square at the top left of the work area; you can hide it by clicking on the slanty arrow right next to it.

I set up the boxes for some text I wanted to edit and what I thought I'd need to jot down as notes while editing:



For this book I'm creating a glossary and a style sheet, so I used two boxes for additions to those. I made an editing task list on the opposite side with notes for what I needed to check, rework or rewrite. I then went ahead and edited the text, but I had to scroll up and down a lot (the boxes have scroll bars, but to move around the work area you use the little black triangle arrows on the borders, which took some getting used to.) About halfway through the text the scrolling started to get annoying, so I resized the boxes to give me a full page of text and smaller, sticky-note size notes to myself on either side:



This was a more workable format for me, and being able to see the entire page of text definitely helped me edit more efficiently. I only had to check the online help page once to find out how to hide the info map. The only drawback to using it was discovering that I couldn't print out my notes, but I then found I could export them to Word (which was not really a big deal.)

I like this program a lot as an on-screen editing environment. I also think it would perform well as a mind-mapper, a virtual storyboard for plotting, and a simple, first draft-type writing area. I would love to see it direct-to-print enabled -- why, yes, I am that lazy -- and I think it would also be cool if you could import actual images as well as text into the note boxes (if there is an option to do this, I didn't find it tonight. All I see is an export option that allows you to send a screenshot to the clipboard or as a .png) Looking at an image of someone or something while I'm simultaneously writing about them would help me with little details that I might not remember. So would having the ability to put floor plans, scene choreography maps or story palettes up on the screen next to a chapter I'm editing.

What I really liked was how easy and logical Story Lite is to use from the first time you give it a go. The limited amount of tools and commands on the task bar were a big plus for me; I find I'm more apt to experiment and try using a new program if there aren't a bazillion menus, icons and options I have to first figure out. I also think it can be used for many other writing tasks, as you can pretty much tailor it to your individual needs.

If any of the above sounds useful to you working writers, I highly recommend giving this freeware a try. I also think it's worth watching, as the designer is planning to develop it, and has created a community for registered users to provide feedback and exchange ideas.

NaNo Now What?

You've all had a week to recover from NaNoWriMo, so I think it's safe to discuss what happens now with your November novel. What follows is my advice as a professional novelist. Blow me off if you want, but I do this for a living, and I think my approach is at least worth considering.

Let's talk about length for a moment. 50,000 words is a novel-length story, but one with a very limited print market. There are a few publishers who will consider 50K novels (Harlequin) and some print mag and antho markets also willing to look at that length, but most publishers are looking for novels in the 75K - 100K range. That said, e-publishers are much more flexible on length, and I believe most are quite receptive to considering novels in the 50K range (and some do print as well as e-book format.)

Don't panic that you haven't written enough for the traditional print market, because unless you are an expansive, thoroughly detail-oriented, get-it-right-the first-time type of writer, your first draft of a novel is likely going to get longer after you edit and revise it.

So that's length, and now I'd like you to forget about that for the time being, because you have more important things to do than count words. You have a first draft to read, edit, buff, polish and prepare for submission.

First question you need to ask yourself: Is the novel finished? If the answer is no, stop reading this post and go finish writing your book. And don't argue with me, because an unfinished story is not a book; it's a partial manuscript. When you've got a completed first draft, then you can come back and go to the next step.

Next step (if you haven't taken it already) is to put your completed novel aside and take a break from it. Stick it in your file or desk, work on something else and put a little distance between you and the story. How long? Everyone is different, but the shortest break I take is three days, and the longest is a month. This time away from the story is important because you need to be as objective as possible, and you usually can't do that if you're up to your ears in the story all day every day.

Once you feel you've taken a decent break, take out your first draft and read it through one time, start to finish, without editing or making any notes on it. You're reading the manuscript this time to get the big picture, which hopefully will allow you to answer these questions: Is this story worth more of your time? Is it still as exciting as it was when it was just an idea in your head? Are you itching to get back to work on it? And, finally, is it a story you believe you can sell?

That last question is a killer, I know. It requires you to take a very hard look at yourself as well as the work. But if you don't believe in this novel now, you're going to have a very tough time selling it to someone else. Now is the time to decide if it's something you want to actively pursue for publication, or something you need to put away.

Btw, if you ever want to come over to my house and see the eight boxes of manuscripts, short stories and other works I've put aside because in the end I didn't believe in them, I didn't like how they turned out or there simply wasn't a market for them, I'll haul them down from the attic for you. P.S., the stories and the original proposal for my Darkyn novels lived on one of those boxes for six years, so don't think anything you set aside is wasted or garbage. Sometimes you have to wait for the market to catch up with you.

Once you've decided that your first draft answers all those questions with a solid yes, then it's time to prepare for an intensive edit. My method is to go through the entire manuscript again, start to finish, and decide what stays and what goes. I use a highlighter to slash through large portions of the story that bore me, are clunky or just don't make sense; these are portions that have to be reworked or tossed out and written over from scratch.

For smaller/shorter type-in corrections for things like grammar stumbles, misspellings and places where I need to clarify, expand or otherwise clean up things for the reader I use a red pen to circle things and write notes on the page. I also keep a notepad handy for things like name changes (it's inevitable that I'll find at least one character whose name I begin to hate for some reason and decide to change), logic problems that will affect other portions of the story (when you change something in one chapter, odds are you'll have to change it in at least two or three more past that point), and facts that need to be checked (because while you're almost sure that huge clock tower in London is named Big Glen, it wouldn't hurt to look it up.)

Common things to look for: too much explanation/too little action, telling instead of showing, eye references, awkward sentence constructions, identical dialogue tags (he said, then she said, then he said, then she said, then they said, etc.), housekeeping dialogue (Hi, how are you? I'm fine, and you? Wonderful. Isn't the weather nice? Yes, it is. Lather, rinse, repeat), characters standing around and doing nothing, characters sitting around and doing nothing, characters whose names are too similar and therefore too easy to mix up, too much narrative, As-You-Know-Bob dialogue info dumps, any other kind of info dump, sparse descriptions, over-done descriptions, lags in the pacing of the story, scenes or chapters in which nothing much happens, obvious filler, and weed words you've overused or echoed too many times.

You may want to run a spell check at this point, too, but spell checking can be done at any point. This is one of those choices you'll make based on how you like to edit. To save time I've stopped spell checking until I'm down to the very last draft, but if you feel more comfortable doing several, go for it.

Once you've completed your first pass, take the manuscript chapter by chapter and do your rewrites, your toss-outs and write-overs, your type-ins, etc. Go slowly and work carefully, and no, it's generally not much fun, but it's a necessary skill you need to develop and constantly work on improving -- and you only get better with practice, practice, practice.

Once you're finished your second draft, take a break for at least 24 hours, again, to put a little distance between you and the story. When the time is right, read through your revised manuscript and evaluate your results.

Some writers get away with doing a one-pass edit; some have to repeat the editing process a few times before they feel they have a book that is ready to be read. The danger here is that you can get caught in an endless editing loop where you read, you edit, you rewrite, you read, you edit, you rewrite, and suddenly it's ten years later and you're still working on the same book (what I think of as Book of Your Heart syndrome.) Your novel isn't going to get published if no one ever sees it, so keep the editing to a reasonable amount/time frame.

Once you have the final/revised version of your manuscript, hopefully not ten years from now, you have several choices: 1) you can do nothing with it, 2) you can ask a trusted family member or friend to read it, or 3) you can dive into the submission process. You can also burn it, bury it in the backyard or lock it in a bank vault in a box that says Do not open until after I'm dead.

If you decide to do nothing with it, don't beat yourself up. Remember those eight boxes in my attic; I'm not going to throw any stones. Learn from the experience and use it to write a better story next time.

I think the most popular choice (especially for first-time novelists) is to ask someone to read it. Obviously you want someone who can give you some constructive feedback without ripping your manuscript to shreds. I had my older brother read my first novel, and he was kind and considerate with his very light critique (and the book was really terrible, but I was just a thirteen-year-old kid, and it meant the world to me, and he knew that.) An ideal first reader gives you an honest reaction without being brutal about it, and that takes some doing, so be selective.

I won't kid you; it's very tough to go through the submission process. Rejections can be harsh and demeaning. You try not to get your hopes up, but your hopes thumb their nose at you and do what they want. There's nothing quite like being squashed by the very people you wanted to impress. It would be safer -- and saner -- not to subject yourself and your hard work to the impersonal, indifferent ego-thrashings Publishing loves to hand out. And if you don't try, you'll never know, and it's as simple as that.

I know a lot of writers see the new trend of no-cost digital self-publishing as a wonderful shortcut around the submission process, and the editorial process, and all the other unpleasant, tedious aspects of traditional publishing that writers hate. I don't disagree with you. Self-publishing is superfast, and now anyone can do it. You don't have to put up with a single rejection or some idiot editor telling you what you can or cannot write, and that's definitely got to be good for the ego. Those are the same reasons we called it vanity publishing back when I started out.

Whatever you decide to do, think about it seriously, and then start out as you mean to go on.

Now it's your turn: are you editing your NaNo novel yet? Ready to send it out or bury it in the backyard? Where are you planning to go from here? Let us know in comments.

Weeding with Wordle

Last year I talked about weeding out words I overuse, and I'm still working on a replacement list for the one I lost. However, I discovered a neat trick when I began playing with Wordle, the ultracool online word cloud generator.

When you're editing a scene or chapter, open the Wordle Create Page and cut and past your text in the top box (right where it says paste in a bunch of text.) The resulting word cloud should look something like this (for a layout like this one, choose "Horizontal" under the Layout menu just above the generated wordcloud):



The words that show up in the cloud as the largest are the words you've repeated throughout the text you fed to Wordle. If one of those words is a character's name (like Jessa in mine) that's obviously not a weed word. On the other hand, if you see words that are the same size as door, around, saw and long in my example, those are words you've overused and may need to weed out.

Another thing you can do is use Wordle to generate some keywords from your story text to give you title ideas. Just do the same thing as above, but this time take the interesting/descriptive words and make a title idea list.



For this one, I'd probably start with words like Savannah, blue, sapphire, time, eyes, sweet, watch, sunrise, night and loved, play with them and see what appealed to me, like Savannah Blue or Nights in Sapphire.

The Copy-Edit Electric

I did finish the copy-edit four hours ahead of deadline, plus I learned something new in the process: Never try to do a copy-edit in only 24 hours. I think I sprained a retina; I'm pretty sure the production team up in NY did, too.

I once did a copy-edit over the phone with an editor, with us both reading from our copies of the ms. and her marking the production copy. As copy-edits go that one was very light, maybe a dozen queries and corrections total, but still it took us a good two hours to work our way through the stack of pages.

This time I did an electronic copy-edit, which is all done in Word (and which is eventually going to become the standard method by NY publishers, I'm told, for doing all copy-edits.) It's basically working with queries typed in those little sidebar comment balloons instead of hand-written notations, but it takes some getting used to. With the exception of that phone call copy-edit, I've always done mine on paper, not on the screen. The benefit for me is that I can use the Dragon now instead of scrawling all over the ms.

Btw, it now looks like Master of Shadows will make our target release date. More details will be coming soon, I promise; I just want to make sure the date is chiseled in stone and I see the final edition before I spill all the beans.

What's up with you guys? And why does it smell like a donut shop around here?

Reviserable

Marcia slowly walked through the smoldering ruins of her home, shocked to see the destruction caused by the unexplained explosion that might have also killed her. If not for John's timely intervention

[Junkies get interventions, not heroines. Specify what he did here.]

If not for John grabbing her, throwing her to the ground and crushing her into the road with the weight of his manly body -- get the picture? -- she would at this moment be winging her way to Heaven.

[Assuming she isn't going the other way for doing it with John in that closet at the Halloween party five minutes after meeting him. Need some good girl guilt, plausible deniability, and couldabeenworse here.]

Perhaps she deserved to die. Marcia still felt scalded by shame over her wanton and wholely inappropriate behavior toward John at the Halloween party. Somehow she would have to accept that she had been under a demonic spell that had forced her to have sex with the first living being with a pulse she encountered. Thank heavens it had been John, who had of course immediately realized that the only way to break the spell was to know her in the Biblical sense of the word know. Otherwise she might have ended up doing it in the back yard with the host's Great Dane.

[Nicely done. I'm starting to smell RITA. Can you work in a line of some soul-wrenching regret for not saving it for the wedding night?]

"Don't think so." Marcia bent to pick up a scorched, twisted picture frame that had once contained the photo of the kids. Now the image of poor little Jimmy, Raymie, Jennie, Suzie, Ralphie, Igory, Brucey, Consuelaly, Supreme Beingly and BillyJoeBobbyRaeBobBilly was a bubbled mess.

[Who are these kids again?]

She sighed, dropped the scorched, twisted picture frame, then bent to pick it up again. It had once contained a photo of the kids in her summer reading group who hadn't quit the program to go look up porn sites on the library's computers. Now the image of poor little Jimmy, Raymie, Jennie, Suzie, Ralphie, Igory, Brucey, Consuelaly, Supreme Beingly and BillyJoeBobbyRaeBobBilly was a bubbled mess.

She closed her eyes and held the destroyed picture against her breast. "Oh, kids. You were my rainbows, my kittens, my unicorns. You mattered to me as much as John, as much as . . ." She began to sing softly. "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray. You'll never know--

[COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT!!!!! NO SONG LYRICS!!!!!! And why the HELL is Marcia walking through the ruins anyway? According to your timeline the house exploded ten minutes ago -- see pg. 21. Fire fighters would still be there soaking it down. Is her jumper made of asbestos?]

Marcia stopped singing. Time rushed forward as the moon raced across the sky, the ruins became a soggy but safe blackened mess that the firefighters had thoroughly soaked down. "Oh, kids, you were rainbows, kittens, unicorns, whatever . . ." She began to sing, although her voice was too soft to hear the copyrighted lyrics. "Mumble mumble mumble."

[Boring -- get rid of this whole kid and singing thing, it's not working for me. Where is John? He's been gone for at least twenty mins. Too long!]

Marcia tossed the ruined picture aside. "John isn't here right now. He's off getting us a motel room. Can I take a message, or would you rather write one in the margin?"

[Ooooo, motel room scenario, much better. Let's end this scene and move onto that.]

"No." Marcia reached above her present paragraph and ripped the line of dialogue about the motel room out of the page.

[Hey. Cut it out.]

John pulled up to the curb, climbing out of his Beemer and hurrying over to Marcia.

[I thought we agreed to switch out the Beemer for a Harley.]

"No," Marcia said through clenched teeth, "you thought you'd call John's Beemer a wimp ass car and demand he trade it in for a Harley. Which he hated, so he traded it back in the final draft of Chapter Two. You could have read it, but no, that was when you took that personal day from work so you could have your back waxed and your thighs cello'd. Remember?"

John looked at the gaping hole in the paragraph above them. "Uh, honey, what happened to the dialogue up there?"

"A character has to do what a character has to do." Marcia flung a hand toward the face hovering over their page. "Ask her about the new motel room scenario, since she's writing the book now instead of editing it. Go on. Ask Saran Wrap Girl. She probably wants us to pick up a herd of sheep on the way over. As long as they're sheep that will feel scalded by shame over their wanton and wholly inappropriate behavior."

[Oh, for Christ's sake. You know, John, I have twenty-six other manuscripts I have to edit before the end of the week.]

John frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

[This is your author's first novel. It can also be her last. I'm just saying.]

Marcia turned her face into John's broad shoulder. "It's so unfair."

[See? She's got a shoulder now instead of a face. You need me.]

Marcia turned her face so that her cheek rested against John's shoulder. "It's so unfair." Behind John's back she lifted her hand and folded down all but her middle finger.

[Hey. I saw that.]

"Now, ladies," John said, pulling Marcia's hand around to rest over his heart and covering with his hand the obscene finger gesture she refused to quit making. "I'm sure we can come to some sort of amicable compromise on these revisions."

"Compromise?" Marcia wailed.

[What compromise?]

"I'll stay and do a walkthrough of the ruins of your home with you, darling, while we have an emotionally-rich verbal exchange," John told Marcia. "Then we'll go together and check into the cheap motel room with the bed equipped with the faulty magic fingers option that starts to spontaneously vibrate just as we begin falling asleep in each other's arms. I'll be too tired to do anything, of course, but that won't be apparent until the end of the chapter."

[Wonderful! Can you hurry up the walkthrough?]

"Maybe we should put on skates," Marcia snapped. "And what about the sheep? Hmmmm?"

John held up a hand. "In exchange, sweetheart, our sensitive, understanding editor will let you keep your summer reading group and your devastation over losing every material thing you own. Oh, and the massive guilt you felt about our closet quickie? Will be changed to a little guilt mixed with a delicious sense of naughtiness. And absolutely no sheep, ashamed or otherwise."

[Oh, all right, anything to keep this moving. I still want a mention of dismay for not saving it for the wedding night in there somewhere. I've already got my RITA accepting-for-the-author speech written.]

"See, darling?" John lifted Marcia's face and smiled into her tear-filled eyes. "It's all about compromise. Now, I'll go and call the motel from my car phone. You still have to retrieve your family Bible, which is of course the only thing that miraculously escaped the destruction."

Marcia eyed John's line about being too tired to do anything, waited until he squished away through the sodden charcoal that had been her home, and listened. As soon as the editor got up from her desk to walk down and steal the last Tab from the employee lounge fridge, Marcia quickly took out a red pen, reached up to John's last line of dialogue, and crossed out family Bible before writing in personal massage device.

A character had to do what a character had to do.

VW#2: Eff the Editing

The winners of the VW#1 giveaway are:

BookWish: Robin Connelly

Goodie Bag: Nicole

Winners, please send your full name and ship-to address to LynnViehl@aol.com (Robin, please also let me know the title and author of your BookWish), and I'll get these prizes out to you.

Before I start today's workshop, two of our LB&LI workshop writers, Karen Duvall and Alison Kent, have very kindly made up some very cool graphics for use by other writers who are participating in LB&LI on their blogs. As they've given me permission to use them, I've posted them on Photobucket at the following links:

Karen Duvall: http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh289/LynnViehl/LBLIGraphic.jpg

Alison Kent: http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh289/LynnViehl/lbli.gif

I think Karen's graphic would be good for blogs with dark or black backgrounds, and Alison's graphic would be the same for blogs with light or white backgrounds. To post either graphic on your blog, use the HTML code < img src = " " > with the spaces removed and the URL of the graphic pasted in between the quotation marks.

And now -- let's workshop!

I. The Editing Dance of Doom

Aspiring novelist Jane Duoh has an amazing story idea. Maybe she's thought it through, or perhaps it just hit her like a thunderbolt. Doesn't matter. She's ready to make writing! She sits down to write what will surely this time be the One She Sells to NY.

Jane has great fun writing her first page, but backreads and notices it doesn't exactly start off with a bang, which she knows she needs to get an editor's attention, so she fixes that. Have to jump on these things right away so they don't kill the momentum, she thinks. Happily she finishes the first scene, but backreads again just to be sure it's topnotch writing. And it isn't, so she changes some things here and there, and backreads again to check her revisions, and makes a few more adjustments. But no problem, Jane is still having fun, and is now ready to write the next scene.

About halfway through scene two Jane gets the sense that the new stuff is not meshing with scene one, but she really needs it to lead into the car chase scene she has planned for Chapter Four, so she backreads and finds the trouble spots and makes those changes. Then, of course, she has to do a little retuning of the first scene to make it fit properly with the new material, and alters the beginning because that doesn't exactly fit now. Jane's not really having much fun anymore, not with all the work she has to do to fix her screw-ups, but after a few more backread-and-change, backread-and-change sessions, she's finally ready to continue work on scene two and get to that car chase scene, where she's sure everything will pick up nicely.

Only it doesn't. As Jane writes, she will repeat these steps a couple of dozen times, until around the middle of chapter three, she's no longer having any fun at all. She's exhausted. This, she thinks, was a stupid idea. Jane is so sick of rewriting that she doesn't even care about the car chase scene anymore. And if she looks at that opening line one more time she's going to hurl. All this work! Obviously her amazing idea wasn't all that great, and she's wasting her time trying to make it work.

At this point Jane is now primed for a distraction, and sure enough, another brighter, shinier idea will pop into her head, and she'll dump these hopeless, useless chapters and begin a new project with the new idea. And the cycle will start all over again.

I don't mean to kick Jane in the teeth. She's probably a good writer, works hard, and is at the keyboard every day of the week. She's likely got some great ideas, too. But if Jane doesn't make some serious changes, in a few years all she'll have to show for her pains is a nice, big collection of partial manuscripts she's never finished. Why? Because Jane is doing what I call the Editing Macarena. She can't finish anything because she's too busy standing in place and dancing the same three steps, over and over: backread, change, repeat.

II. Breaking the Cycle

I was at a New Year's Eve party the first time I saw a writer dance the Macarena (literally.) The demonstrator told me she had learned it on a vacation cruise. It was, quite possibly, the dumbest dance I've ever watched (and I've seen dumb; I grew up in the time when everyone was obsessed with mastering The Hustle.) It certainly popped right into my head the minute I searched for an analogy to the endless loop of editing doom that so many writers get stuck in.

Editing your work is a basic part of the writing process; one of the less pleasant tasks involved with creating a story that sells. I know a few writers who do very little editing of their work, and I've heard of those gifted wordsmiths who never need to edit and refuse to let anyone change so much as a punctuation mark. In the real world of Publishing, however, learning how to effectively and efficiently edit your work is just part of the job.

To be a professional writer, you have to present a product that is written at a professional level, and you will almost always have to re-edit that work when an editor requests revisions or a copy editor rips through the ms. It is in your best interests to learn how to avoid dancing the Editing Macarena and find a method of effective, efficient self-editing so that you can finish your stories. A finished ms. is one you can sell. You'll never sell just three chapters that have been edited to death.

III. The Five Effs of Effective/Efficient Editing

For this workshop, I came up with a five-step editing plan that I think can put an end to all the editing macarenas being danced out there. And in honor of how much we all love to edit, each step is represented by an eff word:

Find - Fix - Fine-tune - Follow up -- Finalize.

Here's how it works:

1. Find: With your favorite highlighter and editing pen, read through a workable section of the WIP that you've printed out on paper. Using your editing pen, circle any typos, grammar problems, punctuation mistakes or other technical blips. With your highlighter, highlight any word, sentence or paragraph that needs work. Do this through the entire section you're editing.

2. Fix: Pull up your WIP on your computer and go through the section you've edited, correcting all the technical errors you circled with your editing pen.

3. Fine-tune: Go back and read the highlighted sections of the WIP. One by one, decide what's wrong with them and handwrite in a revision or correction (if a large amount of text needs fine-tuning, you can do this on the computer ms. to save time.) Once you have all your rewrites written in on the paper copy, transfer them to your computer copy.

4. Follow-up: After you take a break from the ms., review the edited piece to make sure you've made the changes you want, spell check the piece, and then save.*

5. Finalize: When you've finished editing the entire story using the first four steps of this process, and have taken a break from it (I recommend at least 48 hours if possible), repeat the first four Fs, but this time do it for the entire manuscript.

Each of the first four steps is performed one time and one time only for the section of the story you are editing. Once this edit is done, you do not backread or change anything. You move on and write new material.

When you have edited the entire story, you then perform the fifth, Finalize step, but do this only once. Once you have completed all five steps, you are finished self-editing.

*If you've made changes that affect earlier portions of the WIP, you have two options.

1. If it's a simple fix, such as changing the name of a character from John to James, make the change by performing a search-and-replace on the entire WIP.

2. Larger changes that require reworking or rewriting should carried on as changed through the new material of the ms. but be noted on the page where you first change them, i.e. [from here Jessica has red hair and is an orphan from Albany instead of a brunette from Miami.] When you go to do your Finalize step and come across these notations in the ms., then go back over previous sections and make the necessary changes.

IV. But We Love to Dance the Macarena!

Some of you are sitting there reading this and thinking, "That's not nearly enough editing. She's nuts." You know that you need to edit your ms. over and over and over or it will turn out to be garbage because you write a crappy first draft, and a second, and a third, and a fortieth or whatever. Or you will have other excuses that explain why you have to take so much time. If there's one thing writers do very well, it's finding very good reasons not to write.

If you're still not convinced, consider the benefits of streamlining your editing process. Not only will it make you a more productive writer, but it will compell you to improve your drafts. If you know in advance you're only going to get two chances to edit whatever you write, you will naturally be more meticulous when you create that first draft. Think of it as anti-sloppiness training. Having that preset limit on the amount of times you can edit is also excellent practice for what happens when you're turn pro, because we only get about three shots at editing (during the revisions, copy-edit, and galley stages) before what we write ends up in print.

If you don't feel comfortable testing out my formula on a book-length project, try it for one scene or chapter and see if it cuts the amount of time you spend editing and still improves the WIP. If it does, try it for a larger portion of the story, and see what happens. I think you'll be surprised by what you can accomplish.

A couple of you still don't agree with me, I know. You need those extra two or three hundred editing passes, and you're going to keep dancing the editing macarena no matter what I tell you. That's not to say all hope is lost if you do. True story: I once sat next to a very respected literary author at a Publishing luncheon. Very Respected was a nice man and had a lot of inspirational things to say about our craft. I'd never heard of him or any of his books, but I liked his easy-going personality and his hair. For a guy writer, he had great hair.

When Very Respected got up to speak (he was also the GoH) he mentioned taking ten years to write his last book. As my jaw fell into my mystery chicken entree, Very Respected explained how carefully he wrote and edited and rewrote everything, and how much every single word meant to him. He was, without a doubt, the unacknowledged Master of the Editing Macarena.

I would have asked Very Respected more about what it's like to spend ten years writing a single novel, but he had to leave the luncheon immediately after his speech to go back to his non-publishing day job.

However you decide to edit your work, keep in mind the most important eff word in regard to any working writer's WIP: Finished.

Today's LB&LI giveaways are:

1) A stack of my favorite how-to writing books -- unsigned copies of:
Adair Lara's You Know You're a Writer When . . .
Joseph Campbell's Oriental Mythology ~ The Masks of God
Rich Frishman and Robyn Freedman Spizman's Author 101 ~ Bestselling Secrets from Top Agents
Lee Lofland's Police Procedure & Investigation
Dr. Eric Maisel's A Writer's Space
Richard R. Powell's Wabi Sabi for Writers
Todd A. Stone's Novelist's Boot Camp
Ralph L. Wahlstrom's The Tao of Writing
A signed-by-me copy of Philip Martin's The New Writers Handbook 2007 (I have an essay in this one) and a signed/ printed copy* of my own how-to e-book, Way of the Cheetah.

2) a goodie bag which will include unsigned copies of:
Death Angel by Linda Howard (hardcover)
Steal the Dragon by Patricia Briggs
Wild Hunt by Lori Devoti
Pleasure Unbound by Larissa Ione
In Danger by Alison Kent
The Iron Hunt by Marjorie M. Liu
Satisfaction Guaranteed by Charlene Teglia
Through the Veil by Shiloh Walker
plus signed copies of Evermore and Twilight Fall by Lynn Viehl as well as some other surprises.

If you'd like to win one of these two giveaways, comment on this workshop before midnight EST today, July 29, 2008. I will draw two names from everyone who participates and send one winner the goodie bag and the other the stack of my favorite writing books. Everyone who participates in the giveaways this week will also be automatically entered in my grand prize drawing on August 5, 2008 for a brand new AlphaSmart Neo. All LB&LI giveaways are open to anyone on the planet, even if you've won something here at PBW in the past.

*As this is an e-book, this copy will be printed out on standard bond paper and placed in a three-ring binder.

Other LB&LI Workshop Links (due to different time zones, some of these will go live later in the day)

Worldbuilding with a Wiki by Sandra Barret -- Architecting your world using a free wiki.

The Anatomy Of Sex Scenes by Jaci Burton -- Writing sex can sometimes be the most uncomfortable part of writing the book. But it doesn't have to be. A few key pointers that may help charge up your sex scenes and drag the writer out of their 'discomfort' zone.

Creating Great Beginnings - the Why and How by Sherryl Clark -- If your beginning works, the rest will follow. We're going to look at why it's crucial, what is the contract with the reader, Dos and Don'ts (and why/why not), story questions vs hooks, situating the reader, and writing backwards. I'll also invite readers to send in their first 200 words for feedback.

The Comparison--metaphor and simile by LJ Cohen -- a week of workshops using poetry and poetic techniques useful for novelists (tune in each day this week as LJ presents different poetic tools with examples of how to use them in your own writing.)

Gender Differences for Writers by Cheryl Corbin -- Male and female body language, speech and thinking differences.

Marketing on a Budget by Moondancer Drake -- How to make the most of marketing your book on a limited budget.

Writing Effective Description by Karen Duvall -- a week of workshops on how to write vivid description using all the senses, covering one for each day of the week.

WRITING PROCESS: Conceive, Develop, Write by Jamal W. Hankins -- An overview of my writing progress from story concept to actually writing a story.

The Voices in Your Head by Alison Kent -- When discussing "voice," where and how do character voices fit in?

Everyone has to Edit by Belinda Kroll -- Five steps to edit: putting the first draft away, being brutally honest, showing not telling, telling not showing, and focusing on those nitty gritty details.

Balancing Motherhood and Writing by Dawn Montgomery, Kim Knox, and Michelle Hasker -- How to write a 1000 words in the zen of toddler meltdowns. Motherhood is a full time job and holding a family together is only half the battle. How do you find *your* time to write without losing your mind?

Self-Editing by Emma Wayne Porter -- The things your editor secretly wishes you'd do before submitting, and how to survive Track Changes afterward. Checklists and Stupid Word Tricks included.

Not Going to Frisco Workshop by Joan Reeves aka Sling Words -- Writing Biz Reality

Cover Art: From Form to Finish by Mandy M. Roth -- Tips and tricks for filling out your cover art forms, the steps and stages a cover goes through, the finished product and a walkthrough on using your cover to make your own static banner ad.

Hey Fatty (Or Does Your Character Need That Flaw) by Amie Stuart -- I’ll be blogging about Characterization, flaws and motivation all week, using TV, movies, books and my own writing for examples.

Astronomy for Writers: Look to the Sky
by Suelder -- 1,000 Suns (and then some), The Birth of a Star: Star Fields, Binary Stars and Star Systems, Size Matters - How Stars are Classified, Size Matters, pt.2 - The Life and Death of a Star (the second in a five-part workshop series on basic astronomy and how to think about it from a writer's perspective.)

Begin with a business plan by Charlene Teglia -- the first in Charlene's workshops this week on the business of the business.

Short Stories & Novellas- Workshop Day I - Plotting by Shiloh Walker -- the first in a series on writing short stories & novellas.

VOICE: The Magic Behind The Words by Sasha White -- Advice to help you discover and strengthen your personal voice and style, and show you the way to the magic behind the words.
Workshop is in 5 sections. A new section each day this week.

STET Please

Yarn Harlot, aka nonfiction author Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, has an informative post on correcting proofs and answering reader questions that made me laugh out loud (and thanks to Kaplooey Mom for the link.) If you check it out, be sure to read the part about color and colour.

Copyeditors should probably get combat pay for working on my manuscripts. I seriously dislike ellipses (and if you see them appear more than twice in one of my books, an editor or copyeditor likely put them there.) I coin words freely, disdain ordinary names and draw on archaic terms whenever I feel like it, so my style sheets tend to be small novels on their own. I echo and capitalize words incessantly, and I overuse and abuse pronouns in dialogue tags. And we just won't talk about my penchant for beginning sentences with conjunctions. Story is more important to me than anything, and I hated nearly every English teacher I had in school, so when I'm writing I will happily shove any inconvenient grammar rule or accepted writing practice out of my way.

That said, my favorite copyeditors are the ones who are unrelenting. They're tough on me and don't let anything slide. I learn from copy-edits like that. If the correction is very obvious and really stings, I'll try to remember it when I'm writing my next novel (although I'll probably never get the whole lay-lie thing burned into my brain.)

I don't think I'm the worst author in the world to copy-edit, but I might be runner up and capable of carrying out the duties should s/he be unable to submit a manuscript. I doubt my publishers' copyeditors are drawing straws to see who has to work on one of my books (yet) but I could probably be a bit nicer to them when I correct a proof and pen please next to my STETs. If only to keep my author pic off the NAL copyeditor lounge dartboard.

Weeding Words

Over at Storytelling, Rosina Lippi has an interesting post about descriptive words overused by writers. I'm probably guilty of a whole list of those (off the top of my head: whole, great, terrific, probably and wonderful.)

I tend to notice more the object words I overuse. Like my obsession with doors. If I'm not careful, a door will sprout up like crab grass every couple of pages in my story. As will bodies of water, quilts, window sills, paintings or art of some kind, kitchen tables and (lately) flower arrangements. But mostly I'm plagued by doors.

I can't say exactly why my subconscious keeps trying to add these weed words to every scene. I like doors because they are a focal point in any room and part of the setting that actually does something. Bodies of water, well, I'm a girl who grew up near some of the nicest beaches in the country; that likely has something to do with it. I use window sill imagery in a lot of my poetry, that's a cross-over weed word. The rest are just things I find comforting, I guess.

I always spot my weed words after the book is published, but not always before. During the editing phase I try to remember to weed them out with Word's find and replace tool, but even then I'm a bit blind to them or forget to look for them. You can tell when I've rushed too much on editing one of my novels because of the thirty or more door references in the story.

I used to have a weed words list, but last year I filed it away in a place where I wouldn't forget it and have since forgot where that is. I think I'll make a new one and pin it to the wall or something. You writers out there, what are some of your weed words? How do you all deal with keeping them from spreading from scene to scene?

Writing Triage

In trauma medicine, we evaluate multiple injured patients during triage to prioritize the order of their care. If you've ever watched M*A*S*H on television, this is what Hawkeye, B.J. and the other doctors do before they go into surgery. In domestic situations, most patients are first evaluated by their ABCs, or airways, breathing and circulation.

As writers, we have to evaluate our work in progress after we write the first draft for any care and repair it might need. We call this form of self-torture editing, and we all have different ways to do it. Some writers prefer a one-pass edit, while others edit dozens of times. There is nothing wrong with multiple edits, but writers can develop a bad habit of backtracking so often that they get trapped in an editing loop, and never write more than a couple of chapters before they get bored, start a new project, and trap themselves again.

I thought a triage approach might help writers who have a hard time with editing. Imagine for a moment that your latest chapter or scene is a patient in need of evaluation (yes, you get to play doctor.) Instead of a stethescope and an exam room, you'll need a hard copy of what needs editing and a highlighter.

To begin your evaluation, read through the chapter or scene you'd like to edit, look for the following conditions, and flag them with your highlighter:

A: Arresting -- any words, phrases or sentences that for whatever reason stop you from reading past them or throw you out of the story.

Example:

Squilyp wished to argue with me, but he knew we did not have time to debate my prognosis. He did, however, insist I activate the transmitter in my vocollar and keep the channel open as I operated on the patient. I wondered what I was going to make for dinner tonight; Reever didn't care for much protein. A training monitor in the surgical suite would provide a visual feed for him to observe the entire procedure.

Note: it's nice that Cherijo thinks about preparing meals, but now is not a time she would be doing that. Cherijo's focus should be on the patient she's about to cut open.

B: Baffling -- any point in the story that is unclear, whether it needs more detailing or streamlining.

Example:

Squilyp stayed with the patient while I donned a surgical shroud and listened to an ongoing thermal/subdermal aspiration of a v'relkas miatas nearby, and then stopped me as the drone surgical assistance unit rolled its instrument tray past us and into the suite. "I cannot allow you to do this alone. I will stay and assist."

Note: Do you know what an ongoing thermal/subdermal aspiration of a v'relkas miatas is? Neither do I, but it sounds pretty cool. Anything you put in a story just because you thought it sounded cool? Needs to go.

C: Cluttering -- any portion of the story that has no purpose except to occupy space, such as filler or housekeeping dialogue.

Example:

"Color is normal, with some arterial pulsation. A considerable amount of distention in the valve, but the tissue appears viable. Thermal scanner." I used the non-invasive instrument to pinpoint the exact location of the mass. "The obstruction is approximately fourteen centimeters by eight centimeters length-width, possibly five centimeters deep, somewhat oblong in shape with rounded edges that remind me of any number of objects, like a small handheld container for personal items, the Jorenian version of Tupperware, or my author's last StarDoc manuscript, and is still partially lodged in the pyloric sphincter adjunct to the secondary chamber. That is causing the bulge."

Note: This sort of over-detailing is common SF TMI. It has nothing to do with the exact location of the mass, so it slows down the passage. I threw it in there deliberately to give Cherijo more to say, which is a filler tactic and doesn't serve the story.

While you're being a story doc, pay close attention to your pacing. Disruption of pacing is always a dead giveaway. When you pinpoint the things that speed, slow or stop the heartbeat of the story, then you've successfully diagnosed what you need to rewrite or remove to save the patient.

VW#2: Editing and Revising That Won't Drive You Crazy

I. The Conversation No One Hears

Writer: I've been trying to think of how to best describe a writer's internal editor. Remember Mr. Hyde from the film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Take that monster, add in the English teacher you hated most in school, plus a little rabid Doberman, and that comes close.

Internal Editor: Paging Dr. Jerkyl -- your kickoff is weak; borderline pathetic. Trying to think? Thoughts that tough for you? And ye olde movie analogy, how original. So? I'm getting insult but no insight here. Where's the burning bush? P.S. If you trot out your issues with your ninth grade English teacher one more time, I will puke on your keyboard. SohelpmeGod.

Writer (patiently): Anyway, rabid Dobermans, hated English teachers, Mr. Hyde -- dealing with that kind of attitude from the internal editor can be daunting. Especially when--

Internal Editor: Daunting? What's that? Did Mr. Peabody crank up the Way-Back vocabulary machine?

Writer: --you're trying to write, and the internal editor keeps butting in--

Internal Editor: Excuse me. Am I the one who can't remember how to spell occasionally with two c's and one s, or who makes her angry male characters sound more like whiny ass little girls?

Writer: --because that constant nag, nag, nag just kills your forward momentum. That's why--

Internal Editor: Oh, just wait until we go through the rest of the WIP, Honeybunch. You're going to be my rewrite bitch for the next month. In fact, I think I'm going to changes the names of every single--

Writer (muzzling the Internal Editor): --you may find it easier to write without the internal editor shrieking in your ear the entire time.

II. Write First, Edit Second, Revise Third

I do not, under any circumstances, engage my internal editor while I'm writing. I don't backtrack, reread or make quick fixes during my writing time. When I write, I am a writer, and all I do is write, nothing else. The internal editor goes bu-bye and remains perfectly silent until I'm finished writing my new material.

The internal editor cooperates because she knows she'll get a brief shot at the new material that evening. I let her off the leash long enough to read through my new material, editing as she goes along for spelling, grammar, typos, and any other technical blips. We then put away that section of the manuscript and start over fresh the next morning with writing more new material.

Once the manuscript is finished, and I have no more new material to write, I take a couple of days off to get some mental distance between me and the work. Then I remove my internal editor's choke-chain and let her take over for the final read-through, edit and revision of the entire first draft manuscript.

This method may not work for everyone, but by completely separating the two main tasks of creating a novel -- writing and editing it -- I find I am happier and more productive on a daily basis and less likely to hit a block while composing the original story. I also have an easier time when it comes to the massive edit because I'm working with a completed manuscript, not story pieces. I have the confidence of knowing that I finished the story, which helps steady me for the less pleasant job of putting it under my internal editor's microscope and picking out every flaw in it.

III. My Approach to Editing and Revising

As I mentioned above, I do a daily technical edit on the new material I write each day. That means:

A. Opening up the file, performing a spell-check, and correcting whatever the computer finds wrong with the work.

B. I then read through the new material from start to finish to see what the computer missed or I don't like, and make corrections again (I usually do this via a computer screen instead of printing out a hard copy because it's convenient and conserves paper.)

C. Occasionally I jot down notes on a pad while I'm reading on some aspect of the story that will affect the next day's work, because once I save this part of the book after the daily edit, I won't look at it again until I'm finished the manuscript.

As thrilling as writing the book is for me, I look forward to the final edit, because I really haven't reread the daily edits, and now look at them through fresh eyes. This waiting-until-it's-over approach to in-depth editing also creates a certain creative distance from the work which I think allows for more objectivity.

How the final edit goes:

D. I use a printed copy of the manuscript for the final edit simply because I catch more on paper than I do on the screen, and this is when I need to nail every problem.

E. As I read through the manuscript, I use a highlighter to mark non-specific problems (such as a scene that reads flat or a chapter ending that doesn't flow into the next chapter's beginning.) I also keep a red pen on hand to make direct corrections to the text (almost exactly as a copy-editor from the publisher does.)

F. I may also jot down notes on a pad at this stage if I need to verify something or do more research.

Once I've read and marked through the entire manuscript, checked through my notes and made sure I have everything I need in order to revise, I then:

G. Sit down at the computer, open the electronic file, and begin typing in my revisions.

H. Once that's finished, I spell-check, correct typos, and then print out a second, revised manuscript copy.

I. I perform one more complete read-through for missed typos, grammar blips and so forth with the changes I've made.

J. After the last pass, I correct any pages that need it, and then ship off the manuscript to the editor.

My approach to editing and revising is very precise and tailored to my writing schedule, which is often so tight you can bounce a quarter off it. It requires a lot of self-discipline to make it work. I do recommend giving it a try, though, because if you follow my methods you have a better chance of finishing your manscript versus being trapped in a three-chapter loop of writing, back-reading, editing, rewriting, back-reading, editing, etc.

IV. Still Crazy, Now What?

If you find you're reluctant to change even a single word in your story, you're either 1) the best damn writer in the world or 2) you've fallen in love with your manuscript. Chances are it's #2 and it's paralyzed your internal editor, who doesn't want to get between you and your sweetheart. My advice is to save a copy of the complete first draft, put it in a pretty box under your bed, and then get back to work.

Sometimes the problems in the manuscript befuddle you, and you're not sure how to handle them. When I get that feeling, I know I'm not editing at a professional, objective level. My own solution is to take a short break from the work and read one of my favorite novels by another author. I always go for the ones that I think are perfectly paced, superbly plotted or that contain something I admire, and they often change the way I perceive my own drafts (nothing makes your mistakes shine like beacons than reading a great book someone else wrote.)

The most frequent problem writers tell me they have with editing and revising is that their repair work makes the final draft of the manuscript read stilted, patchy or clunky. This is caused by trying to save too much of the original draft to avoid a big rewrite. I think your novel is worth some extra effort, don't you? So don't avoid the rewrite work.

Editing and revising are as important as writing, so you writers out there, don't ignore your internal editor. Just see that they do their job, and leave you alone while you're doing yours.

For a chance to win one of today's two Left Behind and Loving It goodie bags, in comments to this post ask a question or share your view on editing and revising, or just throw your name into the hat by midnight EST on Thursday, July 12, 2007. I will draw two names at random from everyone who participates and send the winners a tote filled with a signed copy of my novel If Angels Burn (paperback), as well as unsigned copies of Kiss Her Goodbye by Robert Gregory Browne (hardcover), Rahab's Story by Ann Burton (paperback), One Gentle Knight by Wayne Jordan (paperback), Tied to the Tracks by Rosina Lippi (trade paperback), Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing by David Morrell (trade paperback),Abandon by Carla Neggers, the July 2007 issue of The Writer magazine, and some surprises. This giveaway is open to everyone on the planet, even if you've won something here at PBW in the past.

Other editing and revising resources:

Self-Editing by Lori Handeland

Holly Lisle's One-Pass Manuscript Revision: From First Draft to Last in One Cycle

Editing Made Easy by Lee Masterson

Jane, Stop This Crazy Edit Machine by Tina Morgan

Painful Prose: How to Edit Your Paragraphs to Make Them Great


Other virtual workshops now in progress:

Joely Sue Burkhart's Do You Know the Secret?

Gabriele Campbell's How to Make a Battle Come Alive on the Page, Part 1

LJ Cohen's Organize your Novel with a WIKI

Rosina Lippi's Workshop Day 1: The Story Machine

Shiloh Walker's Heat with Heart Day 1, finding that missing emotion

Note on comments: We had a massive electrical storm here, and I was obliged to keep the computers shut down for most of the day and use my handheld for updates, which gets me into e-mail to moderate your comments but not into Blogger to respond to them. Weather permitting, I will catch up on answering your questions from VW#1 in the morning.