You Want To Be Edited? Get Ready For Some Heavy Advice...

Okay, so you want to be edited? All right, but don't say I didn't warn you... Because it's not pretty all the time.

Last week, I gave you some tips to avoid indulgences, find your voice, and to flesh out those relationships.

This week, I'm going to give you the ugly. You know, the parts where you cringe because you got caught trying to put a band-aid on a flesh wound that clearly needs stitches. And you left it so now it's all infected and there might be gangrene in there.

Don't even pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about.

Here's the best tip I have for you today: DELETE.

When your editor (or your CP, or whoever is now editing your stuff--sometimes just you!), points out something that is not working, delete it.

Don't try to make it work. Don't slap on another band-aid. Don't get caught up in your clever or your word count or the fact that you have to have that particular scene.

You don't.

You can write another scene to fill the hole. One that actually works.

Then you have to go into the MS and push out all the antibiotics to kill all the infestation that that one little scene created.

I know you've heard of this. The domino affect. Change something on page 52, everything after that has to be brought into consistency.

True fact. And one of the horrors of deleting and rewriting.

But trust me. Those of us who edit, delete. We delete a lot. We rewrite what doesn't work into something that does.

And, for me personally, I find that working with blank pages is the best way to remove the offending parts. Otherwise, I might not get it all. Because your goal as an author is to become the best storyteller you can, using only the best words to do that.

If you're afraid of deleting your words, you're just a writer. You want to become a master storyteller that readers feel comfortable spending hours with, because they know you can weave a story around them using only words.

In order to do/become that, you have to be willing to delete. Is it painful? Sure. That's what copy + paste are for.

Have you overcome your fear of the delete key? You should really get on that.

Obsessed

Status of my Life: Trying to de-stress. Breathe in. Breathe out. I have some non-writing related activities scheduled for this weekend and I think that's really going to help me not be so obsessive over preparing my chapters to send to the editor. I wrote 1000 words today on my YA novel with no name. And I can't decide which WIP to use for a new critique group I just joined.


Hmm. I know I'm an obsessive person. I really try hard not to be, but that doesn't always work out. I'll keep you updated.

So today, I've been OBSESSIVELY checking my online crit group because I posted my synopsis there. One girl (love her!) shredded it for me and sent it back. She was right about everything. Writing the synopsis is so very hard. I'm glad I started early. I had a draft already done, about 7 paragraphs, one page. That's good, because the Buried Editor asked for a one-page synopsis. The problem now lies in making sure every word on that one page conveys something about me, the writing, the story, the plot, the characters, etc. I figured out that one page is about 550 words. For an entire 90 K novel. That's really, really hard.

And so I obsess. I read again. I post somewhere else, somebody else wonderful gives fantastic advice, and the cycle starts again. Read, change, post, ask someone...and before I know it, it's three-thirty, I'm not ready for my plans tonight, or tomorrow, and I really have to get off the computer.

And yet here I am blogging. I had a minute, really! O-B-S-E-S-S-E-D.

Reading: THE WARRIOR HEIR by Cinda Williams Chima

Holy Nervous Energy

Status of my Life: Writing a new novel that has no name. It's about teenage pregnancy, we'll have to see where it goes. And now I'm a complete wreck and need about ten boxes of those strawberry fruit bars from Dreyer's...


Okay, so I haven't actually like, you know, queried. No nerves while I wait forever to be rejected. No checking the email 500 times an hour (I do that now!). But I entered this pitch contest that the Buried Editor had on her blog...

And she requested pages! I'm so nervous! Why, oh why am I so nervous?! I think someone would make a lot of money on drugs for this kind of thing. First, the habitual email checking. I need some pills for that. And now I need something to keep my heart from busting out of my chest as I copy and paste my pages into a new document to send to this woman. Pills, I need pills!

Reading: FREEBIES by Me. This is what I have to send to the editor. HOLY NERVOUS ENERGY. I need a chill pill. Bad.