November 7, 2011

Putting in the Hours

One week in, I'm doing pretty well on my non-NaNoWriMo challenge of revising for 65 hours during the month of November. I had one day when I slipped and didn't work when I intended to, but other than that, I've been putting in more hours than usual because I have this numerical goal to achieve.

I'm making great progress on my second storyline, and now it really is going more quickly than the first, as I hoped. Part of the reason for the different speed is that the overall shape of this storyline is staying the same. I'm still writing a lot of new scenes -- awesome, exciting scenes that I can't stop gloating about -- but often entire sentences are surviving into the new draft nearly intact.

Another important factor is that I'm spending a bit more time each day on revision. And that means not only do I get that same bit more accomplished, but I get extra work done, due to the phenomenon of increasing output that I've noticed before. If I could only write all the time with the effectiveness of the final hour of a long writing session, I'd be done with this darn thing by now.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Editor Alvina Ling describes her process for editing an author's manuscript: "Sometimes, right after the first read I think, 'there's nothing I could do to improve that novel!' But inevitably things will come to the surface during that 'sitting' time: issues with the plot or believability, questions about certain characters, solutions (suggestions, I should say) to problems I've been having with the book, resolution to how I've been feeling about the ending, etc." (Thanks, Nathan Bransford!)

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