Hello all!
Sorry I haven't had much to say since last post, but I had to take care of some finals midway through the month, and I also prescribed myself some serious relaxation time with the family. Gotta love Christmas and the holiday season in general!!
So in light of all the essays I had to write (one of them was twenty pages, holy heck) and the after-Nano November writing I've fleshed out, I stumbled on some advice for every writer's problem: How do you properly edit your own writing?
I know you've all thought about this, especially those of you writing essays and get them back with lots of grammatical issues circled that you should've caught. I know I certainly have, because when I am ready to start sending out my work to other publishing companies, I don't want them to think I submitted a retarded first draft!
I stumbled upon a LinkedIn group chat about the subject, and one girl in particular offered some great advice.
1. For one thing, try to at least ask someone else to read it over. Having someone else willingly and intelligently read your work is priceless! Ask them to look for specific problems other critics have noticed in your work. Are you a comma splice queen like me? Do you confuse tenses of your verbs? Are you worried about the flow of the piece overall? If they're really nice or efficient, they will definitely bring up enough issues for you to tackle. The more, the better, right? TAKE THEIR ADVICE. Especially if you hire a professional. They know the rules enough that your work will look and sound professional.
2. When you're writing, leave it alone for the day and then go to edit it. If you finished a chapter, look at it a day later and you will be able to find inconsistencies that you wouldn't have found earlier. Maybe the pace is off, or the dialog needs to go in another direction. Maybe there's a better way to make your point in an essay. Make the changes, or leave notes for yourself in track changes for bigger issues that you want to get to later (HALLELUJAH AMEN THANK YOU to whoever invented track changes in MS Word).
3. When editing, don't try to polish everything at once. That means, read through your work look JUST for grammatical issues, sentence-by-sentence and ignore everything else. Then go through for spelling. THEN, read through paragraph-by-paragraph to ensure that everything is flowing well. Sometimes we tend to ramble and we want to check that what's there on the page is necessary, especially for essays! At this point, you might want to move paragraphs around and double-check topic sentences of each paragraph to ensure they match the rest of the paragraph. If you are writing a novel, make sure that loose-ends are tied!
4. If you're editing your own writing, read backwards. You heard me. You've probably read it over five times and you think you can't find anything else that could possibly be considered a mistake. Take a complete section of your writing, like a chapter or sub-topic and start from the last sentence. Read just that sentence and look for all those grammatical issues you know you have trouble with. One it's improved, move to the second-to-last sentence and repeat until you're done with the section. You're not looking for the big idea here, just issues on a sentence level. Your writing will look different this way and you won't be able to gloss over things.
Anyway, hopefully these points help. You probably won't catch every tiny little thing, but if you're serious about good, quality writing, you'll produce the best writing you possibly can. Consider these points depending on your project and their deadlines.
Good luck with your 2014 projects! It's a new year to reach those writing goals!
word count: 50,285
page count: 85
Oh my gosh, that's a true statement all right! Yup, I managed to succeed in
this year's NaNoWriMo challenge. I apologize for those of you who were
wondering where the heck I disappeared off to once November drew to a close. As
some of you know, it's already a bit stressful trying to write a novel's
first draft during the busiest month
of the college semester. Sooo, once November ended, I picked up the pace to
keep up with my studies.
But here's the story:
Over the entire month of November, I ended each day questioning myself,
"Why are you doing this, anyway? The book won't be done, anyway, plus you
have so many other things that deserve your attention. What's the point?"
I'm glad I didn't give in, even though there were days where the words didn't
come and I wasn't focused on the plot or characters at all. But on the last day
of November, I found myself sliding across the finishing line! For those
reasonably skeptical folks out there, you're probably like, "So how do they
even know that you wrote all those words anyway?" Well, they have a word
counter thing and to validate your manuscript, you copy & paste your work
and their word count is apparently different from the word count used in
Microsoft Word, because they thought
I was 100 words or so behind! That didn't stop me, so on the last day, I wrote
almost 300 extra words so that I could satisfy the word count. And it felt
great! My brainchild and I survived!
So what's next you ask? Well, even though I won the challenge, I probably
won't use any of the "winnings"—that being all the various resources
where I can self-publish my novel in e-book format. I don't want to give out a
first draft of ANYTHING I write, and the novel itself still isn't done, believe
it or not. I have this great relationship between two characters that spans
over a few years and I want to make it seem real rather than a "So we just
met, wanna get together?" type of thing.
It's not the end of the world; I won in many ways, because I have a new novel
which I didn't have a month ago, and I pretty much proved to myself that any
excuses I make up about not having enough time to read or write for pleasure
are just bogus. So I hope to be able to still right every day—maybe not the
same intensity—but I'll get somewhere with this project and my other project
that has taken me years to get about 300 pages fleshed out.
If anything, take my advice when I say: if you have a goal or a hobby, if
it's that important to you, than it deserves your time and efforts. I always
think "Oh, I'll have time to write over the summer or during the
holidays" but I don't get as much done as I hoped I would and I always
think that I'm too busy or stressed to write during school. Everyone has their
own way of prioritizing their lives and how they use their precious time, but
if you have a goal, it's important enough. That means not always listening to
others who think that you should spend more time with studies or work or
something. It's not like I didn't go to classes or finish my school work for
the sake of this novel—ugh, my parents would kill me—but I made sure I had two
solid hours each day to write and I found ways to get everything done. It just
happens; you get smarter about your planning and prioritizing and everything
falls into place.
So if you're a writer and time doesn't seem to be on your side—try to make
it work, anyway. You really get better at it every day, and taking time to
think about your project and what you want to say is really beneficial.
So write on, people, write on.
Word Count: 40,266
Page Count: 73
You probably never saw this coming, but today I managed to write 2,200 words. It's great news for me, because this entire month I have been perpetually behind by 1,500 words and lately it has whittled down to just about nothing. My fiancé just told me to bulldoze through the 300 words that I needed to catch up today, but my brain was acting all lethargic and constipated. By that point, I wasn't even half-way through the words I needed to write for today.
Well, it just goes to show--this NaNoWriMo project is possible to achieve when you're lost in a scene that just writes itself; I don't have to be extra wordy just to make the count, it just comes.
I hope that happens for you, fellow writers! If you're stuck somewhere in a narrative, but that on hold--what scene are you really wanting to write? Is it the climax? Is it meeting a new character? Is it the ending? If it's about to explode if you don't do something with it, forget working chronologically and get your words out so they can finally have some life.
Only a week left! Here comes 10,000 ish more words!
Word Count: 20,773
Page Count: 38
Oh yeah! I'm feelin' the burn. It's like a marathon run...I have to keep telling myself that I'm HALF WAY DONE. Well, half-way minus 2,000 words. I tell you, this week has been so insane. All I can say is, school is kicking my trash at the moment. You know, people sometimes assume that as an English major, I have all the time in the world to read or write for fun. Yeah, until I have free time, I'll be using all my time going to campus for classes, going to work and working on five simultaneous projects.
The fact that I was able to write 1700 words today was a miracle. I'm already behind 1.5 day's worth of writing and I can't afford any more slip-ups! But I managed to get everything done today that needed my immediate attention and magically had two hours left for this NaNo madness. I tell you, this is so hard but so worth it.
I think over the weekend, I'll try to screw my head on straight and then I can actually share with you good people what I'm actually writing about. I hope you find the concept remotely interesting.
It's just funny how when you have buttloads on buttloads of things to do, you manage to take two hours of your life to help someone else without being asked and still find the time to get your stuff in order. I don't know about you, but I believe in a higher power, and He's got my back on this one.
Current Word Count: 17,282
Page Count: 32
Holy heck, Leute.
Just to let you know, in order to make the cut by the end of November, I must write roughly 1,600 words a day, or three pages of writing. It's a lot, but so far, I'm somewhat on track. I'm actually (blarg) 1200 words or so behind because I was sick. So now it's time to play catch-up.
Writers, how do you keep your butt glued to the seat to write when you'd much rather enjoy the nice weather outside, communicate with other people, or literally do anything else, like clean the whole house, rearrange all the wall décor or go save Gotham City?
It's probably not as bad as it looks; I mean, did you see how many words I've written in the past eleven days? That's right, it's the twelfth, but I haven't gotten around to today's 1600 bit.
Anyway, for your fun-filled enjoyment, check out the cover I designed for my book! I must give credit to kechake-stock for the picture of the girl in the cute lace shirt.
Fight the good fight! Write it 'til it's over!
Writers,
Have you ever had a difficult time trying to find a reasonable name for your new characters? I mean, you don't want it to be cheesy or anything, and let's be honest, "Harry Potter" is already taken. So you have to be a little creative.
These people are practically your newborn children; you can't go giving them lame or dull names. You have to let their names speak for them.
A friend of mine passed this article along to me, and I thought it was super helpful: http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/the-7-rules-of-picking-names-for-fictional-characters
Here are the main points, but go read the article for yourself:
1. Check root meanings.
2. Get your era right.
3. Speak them out loud.
4. Manage your crew appropriately.
5. Use alliterative initials.
6. Think it through appropriately.
7. Check ’em again.
For writers wanting to find accurate names for various nationalities, I would highly recommend http://www.behindthename.com This is an awesome website with thousands of names with origins, meanings and what have you. It's super awesome, especially if you're tired of using the same names or you think the ones you have just don't have enough "ummph" to them.
Once you find the right name, you'll know. Just say "yes" to the name.
Well hey!
Most of you that are reading this probably want a quick & easy reason as
to why you want to read—and keep reading—this blog. It’s quite simple:
I’m trying to complete the NaNoWriMo challenge among other challenges that I
want to accomplish as a writer & editor.
What’s NaNoWriMo you ask? You can check out http://www.nanowrimo.org, but it’s a
challenge to celebrate National Novel Writing Month. SO, the challenge is to
write 50,000 or a novel (whichever comes first) during the month of November.
I want to post a bunch of cool stuff that I do to make this goal. AND, I
feel like if the entire Internet comes together to hold me accountable for this
goal, then I can’t back out or give up so easily can I!
In posts ahead, I’m going to divulge my ideas for the book I’m
writing—because it isn’t just a word count; it’s an idea that took root in my
brain like, two years ago and I’m taking the challenge so I can see the darn
thing on paper for once. Yeah, that’s the prize—I get my own paperback copy!
ONLY every author’s DREAM!
Does anyone have writing goals they want to accomplish? Have you ever wanted
to write a book, and if so, what is it about? I hope to pass along ideas that I’ve
used in keeping the dreams alive and having fun with writing. It’s a beast; but
you can pet it like a kitten.
Hello all!
4. If you're editing your own writing, read backwards. You heard me. You've probably read it over five times and you think you can't find anything else that could possibly be considered a mistake. Take a complete section of your writing, like a chapter or sub-topic and start from the last sentence. Read just that sentence and look for all those grammatical issues you know you have trouble with. One it's improved, move to the second-to-last sentence and repeat until you're done with the section. You're not looking for the big idea here, just issues on a sentence level. Your writing will look different this way and you won't be able to gloss over things. 
