Hey!
As you can tell by the title, my camp is finished. I had set a goal of 50K words, which, in editing speak, is 50 hours of editing. I hit 50K, validated, and instead of drinking champagne, I kept editing. I hit 60K and now I am pushing for 70K. I think I can do it. But wow... 70 hours of editing in a month... I know I can do it!
I have to. I have momentum and I need to use it. Because I despise editing. Damn it, Jim, I'm a writer, not a doctor. And it's true. I can write forever, but of all the worlds I create, and characters I fall in love with, and the conflict my devious mind can come up with, none of it is perfect. My writings need a doctor's healing touch (read editor).
And it's not easy. Not the admitting that my first draft is not perfect. I swallowed that pride a long time ago. But I know what I meant with that incomplete thought. I know who is talking in a string of dialogue that I don't tag, I know whose head I am in at any given moment in the story. I mean to use sentence fragments as a stylistic choice, to deliver more punch.
So it makes it difficult to read back over and make changes. Editing does not come easy for me. Which is why I left so many things untouched for so long. And now it is coming back to bite me in the ass.
Beta readers are a good thing to have, but all of my beta readers are also writers, busy with things of their own. What is a writer to do? Let you work sit and look at it with fresh eyes. But how long is too long to let something ferment? When does your novel become less like wine and more like... something gross?
I ask this because I am having trouble getting back into my first Nano novel. I miss my elves and dwarves. I miss that world. But as I am trying to edit it now, I am having troubles getting back into that world.
I really wanted this book to be finished by now. I wrote it for Nano 14. I will make it... somehow. Because I am proud of that book, even though it's hard getting back to it.
Maybe it's because my angels and demons won't leave me alone.
My camp this April was/is finishing Lost. Done. It is in the hands of a beta right now, getting what is hopefully its last read-through. I SOMEHOW managed to get Redemption ready for a beta. And I WANTED to move on to Heart of the Sun, but... nope. I am working on Addicted.
Maybe it's the amount of work HotS requires... Most of the book doesn't even have chapters... The love it needs is daunting, to say the least. It will happen one day...
