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Writing Log 6-16-12

This is a reading summary.

After my day-long blitz to finish the book, I thought about letting it cool, giving me some space between the drafting process and the revision process. That 'space' turned out to be about half a week.

Using the brilliant yWriter5 as my way around irritating compilation issues, I imported my book into Word, changed the double dashes into em-dashes, deleted some superfluous asterisks, tweaked the formatting just a touch, paginated the thing, and then saved it to my USB drive. Despite some mild hiccups (or hiccoughs, if you will), I managed to get it printed out at a nearby UPS Store that was doing a promo of $.02 a page. That's a third the cost of the next cheapest place. So--splurging--I went ahead and purchased two copies of the book--for less than the price of one elsewhere. Downside was that the printing screwed up certain letters: capitals P, Z, and K were weird, everything in italics looked screwy, and the lowercase k, g, and z were also weird. It made it kind of hard to read, but, in the end, it didn't matter.

I had my book in my hands.

I also took the time to email the book to myself, as well as my mom, sister, and younger brother, who have Kindles and Kindle apps. It was cheaper than printing out more copies and improved the chances that they'd actually read the book. (Currently, only my mom has finished reading it.)

With school finally over with, I could devote more of my attention to revisions. But I had to get the whole story in my head. Despite episodic readings (thanks to writers' group, mostly, though last summer's trip to Disneyland kept the first half of my book fresh in my mind), I hadn't really looked at the whole narrative, top to bottom, before. I set myself a goal that, two weeks into summer, I would have finished reading my book for the first time.

It wasn't easy. I got it done--it'd be rather pathetic if I didn't, honestly--but it was a lot of work. Part of it came from the sheer number of words. A book with 309,000 words is, in typical paperback size, somewhere between 750 and 800 pages. That normally takes a little while to work through, though an actual paperback shouldn't have all the issues that my print version did.

Part of the way that I did it was using the Kindle. I would read the print version for a while, but then I'd have to, say, do the dishes. Using the search feature on my Kindle, I would find the chapter--or, if necessary, the word--that I had ended on in the print version. Using an okay-because-it's-free feature of the Kindle, it read my book to me in an emotionless, electronic voice. While I hated hearing the words mispronounced--the names especially--it was nice to have a voice other than my own to read the words. In fact, that's one of the hardest parts of revising a book--it's 300,000 words in my own voice in my head. It's like listening to yourself on a YouTube video for 10 hours straight. It's painful.

Add to that pain the egregious continuity errors. I had some characters die in one chapter, then be alive and angry in the next. I moved massive portions of the city from the east side to the west side. Some 'brilliant architecture' was introduced in one little throwaway moment, never to be seen again. Motivations that made sense in my brain when I drafted one chapter turned out to be myopic and stupid in the next. Items that were supposed to be on the floor were picked up, then returned. It was like watching a Stephen Groo movie. Not that the comparison is really fitting (save the awkward, painful part), I just wanted to link to a Stephen Groo movie link. (If you didn't click the link, you need to. Turn up the volume. You won't thank me later.) Anyway, the continuity of the story has always been something I worried about, as I'm (apparently) too lazy to actually read the chapter that I had written the week before. In one instance, I even had the characters respond to a big event at the end of one chapter, and in the very next one, they responded as if they hadn't seen the event seven paragraphs earlier. So I knew that there would be some major issues with gaps. Reading it all at once like I did really helped me to see those and calibrate what I'll need to do in order to fix it all up.

Which leads me to my latest conundrum. I can't plan on editing one chapter a day, as that would take 85 days to do that in. I don't have 85 days left of summer, and I really want to get the book revised before the school year starts. (There are manifold reasons for this, not the least of which that I am excited to be a part of quidditch practice, which happens on Saturdays. I won't be able to have quidditch and writing, and I want to postpone this difficult choice for as long as possible. If I get the book edited before the school year starts, I'll feel more justified in keeping Saturday quidditch for a little longer.)

It's one thing to just say I'll read through the book with a pen this time, but there are thousands of comments that group has given me. I noted them originally as we discussed each chapter, but I can't look at a synopsis and call it good. I have to Google Doc each person's version and do my own interpretations on top of that. If I really want to be thorough (which I only kind of want to do), I will have to read my book backwards. Apparently that's an editing trick that is used by editors to help them catch typos and solecisms as they go along. It prevents them from getting too involved in the story and missing the small things. Then I have to update the file on the computer, which is another huge drain on time.

So what to do? I'm not sure yet. I'm going up to my cabin where there isn't any internet access, so I will have to do something about the writer group comments...I don't know. The easy part of writing my book is over. Now it's just the hard work.

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