A Look Back at 2017

Hello again. Sorry for this going quiet but, in the long run, this is the ball that gets dropped first in my life. It's not out of malice, but something that just is a natural consequence of wanting to get other things in life done. However, I thought that I would take a look back at the good and, while not bad, the things that I wasn't the most proud of. I don't want to use the word bad because... they're not. It's not a bad thing that things didn't get done or goals didn't get accomplished, it just is. It happened, let's get back on track to make 2018 better, and move on. If you keep on beating yourself up over things that have already happened, then you're never going to move forward. So, in the spirit of that, we're going to move forward on what I got done, what didn't get done, and how I feel about it.

What Got Done:

• I won my 10th NaNoWriMo. While the project itself isn't finished, I'm still proud that I started it and that I have an idea of the overall world. It is very much a telling myself the story type draft at the moment and I am more than okay with that.
• I am at the farthest of my editing in Mystery of the Dark than I thought I would be. I'm slowly getting the entire thing edited and sent back and 2018 will be the publishing year. It has to be. I'll talk about this more in the second section.
• The sequel for Mystery of the Dark is slowly being written. The 3rd book is completely done and just needs plot tweaking. I know what I'm doing for the 4th and 5th book, even somewhat the 6th and 7th. The entire series is plotted out with the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th book having titles - Slight of Hand, Flash of Fang, Song of Siren - that correspond to what supernatural being is focused on in each book as well as the overall plot arc too.
• I moved! It's a whole suburb over but I am walking a ton more (ok, not now, it's winter and FREEZING in the Midwest). I call this a what got done because it feels really good.
• I have released over 100 pounds and working on the next 70 more to get to my overall goal.

Okay, next section. Those four are really good and awesome and shouldn't be swept aside. Let's talk about what didn't get done.

What Didn't Get Done:

• Mystery of the Dark to the publishing stage. Yes, this is on me and I completely understand that but, at the same time... I don't think I was ready. Every time I thought of publishing, I got scared shitless and dragged my feet even more with editing. So, yeah, I wasn't ready and it's good to get that off my chest. However, this is going to be a 2018 goal and we'll get more into that with the 2018 goals post that will go up on Monday.
• I haven't lost enough weight. This is more of a funny, because I've released over 100 pounds (not all last year, but you know, total) but I feel like I've been going slower at it. So I'm going to strengthen my Bright Lines (feel free to go Google) and get back to food journaling.
• My areas of the house are unorganized. Sure, the majority of the boxes are gone but not all of them. My drawers are a mess, there are clothes that I should donate, so on and so forth. Also, I might need to go rearrange my bedroom because my head is up by a window (did I mention it's cold here?!) or possibly move all of my things into the basement to have an own apartment type space. We'll see. The basement is huge and my work area is down there.

So, yeah, things didn't get done, but other things did! I think the entire series being completely plotted and four out of six / seven books being titled is awesome. I think losing all the weight I have is awesome. I have been awesome this year and I need to focus on that. I also need to move forward, which might be my 2018 phrase with forward being my word, and that's what I'm going to do. One foot in front of another, picking myself up when I fall, and not beating myself up so much. It'll be a slow journey but I hope you stick with me to see where we go in the crazy year of 2018.

Happy New Year and see you on Monday! Happy writing and/or editing.

Editing and Where to Start

Yes, we're back to talking about editing. If you're a writer, then you're going to have to make time in your life for editing. I know I've touched on this before but I felt like it should be talked about again. So here we are.

Last week, I talked about putting the novel in a drawer and I fully believe in that. You should clear your head and give yourself a small bit of space before sitting down again. There's burn out and just not seeing your mistakes and so on. However, that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here about where to start. Yes, the where is just as important as the when. While it is going to be at the beginning, that's not what I mean.

The where is what you want to focus on while you're editing. Do you want to make sure that you don't have any plot holes? Then you should read the entire thing through and keep a notebook where you feel the plot jumps. Do you want to focus on typos and other tiny mistakes? Then you should print out your novel in five chapter bits and go through with a red pen to mark where you need to change things. Maybe you want to do both, which you can do, but it is also helpful to sometimes just focus on one thing at a time. Also, there's nothing saying that you can't fix the smaller things while looking for plot holes or vice versa. Or whatever you want to focus on.

The idea here is to not make the editing process feel like a climb up Everest. You can break it down into smaller pieces and then put everything together to make a whole. Otherwise you'll have a ton of novels done but go nowhere with them.

I hope this helps. If you have any questions or want to continue the conversation, feel free to leave a comment below or poke me on Facebook or Twitter. Until next time, keep on writing or editing!

Editing Your Short Story

We're coming to the end of our short story month here on the blog, which means that we're going to touch on what happens when you're done writing.  Yes, it's time to talk about editing, which some writers like and some writers dread.  I like and dread it, so here's my top three tips for editing.

1. If you can, put it away for a few days before reading it again.  It gives you time to have some fresh eyes and a bit of a break.  Sometimes breaks are good things and you come back to see all the problems in your story.  Identifying those problems help you to edit them which makes your story even better.

2. When editing, read your story out loud and change where you say something different than is on the page.  It's going to be a bit silly but, really, you're going to catch where you have a grammar or plot mistake easier this way.  Also, you can hear your dialogue and go "wait, I didn't mean that" and be able to go back and change it.

3. If you have willing friends and time, ask someone to read it over for you.  Just remember that their edits come from a place of wanting to help - after all, they're your friends - and the edits will make your writing better.  Also, they might have noticed something you missed.

What tips do you guys have that I might have missed?  Do you feel these will help you or hurt you in editing your story?  Feel free to leave comments below and, until next time, keep on writing.  Or editing!

An Update

One and a half chapters are done.  I overuse some words too much, like just, but otherwise, there's nothing too horrible.  Saturdays and Sundays are going to be the days where I put the line edits into the word documents.  Right now, it's more printing out and going line by line to find the mistakes.  Then, when that's all done, just do a quick read before sending it out to the readers.  Should take about a month, month and a half, and then... then I'm not sure what to do with myself.

Other than write book 2.  I am thinking that I might start outlining and writing it instead of the other projects I have on tap.  We'll see.  I've got the rest of the month to figure out what to do.