Done! (well, not really)

I finished the first round of edits for Beneath a Broken Sky Wednesday (yay!). In that round I went through and cut big scenes, added new ones and made sure everything was where it was supposed to be. Big stuff. I didn't bother with too much line editing at this point. If I saw something then I would fix it, but I didn't allow myself to obsess.

Now(proving how it's time for the paper edits/line edits. For this I like to print the whole thing out and slap it in a binder. There's just something different about having the fiscal paper to look at that makes you see things that you missed before. It's also cool to have tangible proof of all your hard work. On the computer you can look at the file size, but that doesn't have the same impact as slamming down 301 pages of solid story on your kitchen table.

As I move into this new round of edits I'm going to be focusing on my description. I'm one of those writers who (if she isn't careful) has characters talking in a white room. I don't like going on and on about the furniture or the trees or whatever else is surrounding them, but of course I need to have something there. So that's what I'm going to be focusing on.

I've found that it helps to pick one main thing to look for when going through a round of edits. If I try to fix everything all at once, I'll go crazy and the book will never be done. But if I just pick one, there's a much better chance that I'll actually fix that one thing and at the same time I won't go completely insane. Pick your battles and fight them to your fullest.


On another note, my desk is a mess again (well, messy for me at least). Scraps of paper, scissors, little pictures, note book pages with scribbles on them, a half drank cup of tea and sticky notes. That can only mean one thing... I'm almost ready to start writing a new story.