Weekly Update – 8/2/17

Hello, Internet!

It’s been a good week. Got some good work done on Rule, and I’m starting to feel pretty optimistic again about revising the blasted thing.

Reading

So I may have gone ahead and just finished re-reading The Shadow of What Was Lost over the past week. As I commented last week (regarding Percy Jackson & the Olympians) I’ll often get sucked into a story and just need to finish it. That happened with Shadow, so now I’m left incredibly impatient for Echo coming out later this month.

One critical takeaway I’ve got from my re-read is that Shadow leaves a vexing number of questions unanswered. In addition, much of the resolution of the plot is a deus ex machina (albeit out of a perspective character). Now, in the process of reading the book these really didn’t bother me – but it’s putting a LOT of weight on An Echo of Things to Come to resolve my questions and satisfy my curiosity.

I’m going to try holding off from fiction for a few weeks, until Echo is released. It’s been a while since I read a bunch of nonfiction, and I’d like to take some time for that.

Writing

Although I didn’t meet the goal I set last week, I feel like I got a lot done.

In hindsight, planning to move the battle scene was unrealistic. I hadn’t realized the changes which would naturally come about from the cuts, and how the material I’ve already passed over would need to be revised. That being said, I’ve got my previous revision updated and changed (and those changes put into the Word doc!) and I’ve moved on to the next chapter.

So, I ought to be about a chapter or chapter and a half away from where that battle needs to go. Getting up to that point is my goal for this week.

I think I’ve finally found a method of editing which works for me. I don’t know if I’m just an idiot and this is how most writers revise their work, if I could have stumbled across this on some article three months ago, or what not – but hey, if it works, it works!

I’ve been going back over a clean type-copy and scribbling on it, and then for passages I need to cut out & rewrite, I’ve been doing those rewrites then and there on looseleaf. Then, when I’m putting my edits into my second draft Word doc, I just type up the new sections and delete the old.

What really helps me here is that I’m able to do all of the revisions by hand. I’ve tried revising or rewriting large passages in the past, but taking a completely new pass at a chapter just feels odd to me. It just doesn’t work. Even when there’s extensive changes to be made, revising like this is giving me a fighting chance.

I’ve also improved at letting problems go, I think. I know for sure that there’s rough edges on what I’ve done this week – but hey, that’s what the line edit’s for, right?

In Review

Last Week: Chip away at The Shadow of What Was Lost, and move one of the battle scenes of The Rule of Iron into its new home & smooth it into place. Partially successful? I finished the book (whoops?), but misjudged my revising goal. That being said, I did get good work done, and I’m feeling good about the piece again.

This Week: Read a little nonfiction (I just started a re-read of The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus), and finish revising my current chapter. That should put me in place to smack a nice fat battle scene into place next week.