Camp NaNoWriMo Diaries: Day Six – Whereupon I Face My Greatest Fear … Editing

Dear Diary,

Yesterday was Day Six of Camp.

Due to my decision to enter the Weta Nichols Writing Contest, I thought my Camp goal would switch (hopefully only shortly) to editing the first 2500 words of the first chapter (the contest’s maximum limit – my first chapter is closer to 4k words, I think) in preparation for submission.  The contest due date is July 15th.  Not much time there.  So, yesterday, I began those edits, at the standard Camp NaNo conversion rate of 1 hour of editing = 1000 words.

I have long known that editing this novel would not be pleasant.  It is currently a horrible mess of half-written and somewhat contradictory scenes, all smashed together on a timeline that’s as flexible and malleable as history to a Time Lord.

The advice is “Write HOT, edit COLD!” after all.  (Or “Write drunk, edit sober,” if you’re Hemmingway.)  And I’ve been writing hotter (drunker?) than ever before in my life.

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Meaning I leave a trail of smoking destruction in my wake.  (Or a trail of vomit, which might be a more accurate descriptor …)

The point is, I began my editing yesterday with a great deal of trepidation.  A long while ago, I sent off my first five pages of my first chapter (coincidentally, that turns out to be about the first 2500 words) to a pair of wonderful ladies at Write Story Editing.  At the time, I was pretty darn happy with that first 2500 words.  They were sent off as a sample of WSE’s editing style, to see if I’d like to work with them on the full project later.

Well, let me tell you that I most DEFINITELY DO want to work with them in the future, based on their feedback for that first 2500 words.  (And I’d recommend them to YOU too!)  But you see, it turns out those 2500 words are really not all that great, and need a whole lotta work.

And now I was finally forced to look at that feedback and come up with a way to improve the prose.

Don’t get me wrong, I generally LOVE proofreading/editing/beta-reading for other people.  I can make suggestions and give it back and let them do the hard part of figuring out how to incorporate my suggestions (or not).  But doing that part myself is really not fun.

I tackled an hour and a half of editing yesterday and made it through the first two pages of five.  O_o  I really enjoy long sentences, you see, with lots and lots of -ing phrases.  Which, once it’s been pointed out to you, is really quite obnoxious.

Example:
Original first paragraph:
Pavel Sokolov’s gaze kept drifting from the road over to his wife, sitting drawn and pale in the passenger seat, hands clasped tightly in her lap over the pastel floral print of her skirt.  Empty fields of dry yellow grass and hollowed husks of trees scrolled past the tinted windows, but Amy stared straight ahead, watching the swiftly decreasing quality of the asphalt slide smoothly beneath their Ventsword as it raced along the mag-lev line .  She hadn’t said a word since they’d left the last outskirts of Una Primus.

Finding new ways of wording those sentences without then turning them into passive voice was a huge challenge.

Example:
Revised first paragraph (subject to change yet again, of course):
Pavel Sokolov looked from the road ahead over to Amy, sitting drawn and pale in the passenger seat beside him. Her hands were clasped tightly in her lap and nearly as pale as the pastel floral print of her skirt. Empty fields of dry yellow grass and hollowed trees scrolled past the tinted windows, but she only stared straight ahead. The swiftly decreasing quality of the old asphalt road slid smoothly beneath their Ventsword as it raced along the suspended mag-lev line.  The silence in the cab was absolute. She hadn’t said a word since they’d left the last outskirts of Una Primus.

I also had a problem with “deep POV”, as in, I wasn’t really letting the readers into Pavel’s head.  He acted and said things, but the reader didn’t really get why he was doing or saying those things.  (I also have to thank Lisa and Kary for giving me the name of that phenomenon … I can now explain myself properly when beta-ing for other people, lol.)  I found that I know Pavel a lot better than I did when I started, of course, and so the deep POV there wasn’t as difficult as the more technical fixes.

But it did make me realize something else.  Pavel and his wife Amy are both acting all wrong in this first chapter.  For character consistency throughout the novel, especially given what happens later, their roles must essentially be reversed.

It was at this point I stopped editing and called it a day.  I will tackle that re-write next time.

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And as exhausting and annoying as it is to sit and wrestle with those words for hours just to realize the whole things needs a rewrite, that’s really what editing is for.  Especially when you’re just slopping things down (as you should) for the rough draft, that first bout of editing is going to be tough.

So yeah, this measly 2500 words is going to be tough.  I’m not looking forward to it … but then I am looking forward to it.  I want the finished product, dang it all!!

I want to see the shiny gem that comes out of this ugly rock!

<3 JRF