Goal accomplished

Last week, I said I wanted to transfer what I had written of the sequel into a CreateSpace template and work on it for half an hour every weekday morning.

Mission accomplished!

Yes, I had to get up half an hour earlier each morning. Surprisingly, that wasn't hard to do. (5 a.m. isn't that different from 5:30 a.m.) And I was right about it being easier to write in the morning. I had no trouble writing.

Admittedly, it wasn't first draft writing, it was revising the first few chapters to add elements that I'll need later in the book. But there was a little bit of new stuff, adding those elements. Eventually I'll be ready to tackle writing wholly new chapters.

I have some chapters written that I won't be able to use (because I was heading the plot in a different direction), but I was surprised to find sections in those chapters that I will be able to use. One paragraph made me laugh out loud, which is great, because if it your own writing doesn't make you laugh, why should anyone else laugh? I always want my writing to have... sparkle, life. If it just sits there and goes thud, it's time to get rid of it or revise it. Whether I succeed at that or not is for others to judge, too, but at the very least, I need to like it.

This coming week: 1) I hope to get the proof copy back so I can pass it on to my next reader, and 2) I'll keep working on the sequel.

See you next week!

Looking ahead

I should have ordered two proof copies. Because while someone else is helping proof my book, I can't work on it.

That's the situation now and will be for a couple of weeks. I have one willing victim highly valued volunteer currently reading my book and another lined up for afterwards. Then I'll finish my editing.

But in the meantime -- well, I did take a vacation, but now I'm back. If I'm serious about writing besides publishing this one book, there's plenty I can work on.

For instance: I started writing the sequel to Just Like Magic many years ago, and I have several chapters written. I could insert that material into a CreateSpace template, format it, and generally get inspired to keep working on it.

Then: If I'm going to be writing first drafts, I need to make a regular time for it. That sort of intense writing has never been something I want to do after work, when I'd rather collapse, eat, surf the internet, read, or do something fun. (I actually find formatting manuscripts fun, so I have done a lot of formatting for Just Like Magic in the evenings.) Writing takes more psychic energy (it's scarier), and I'm a morning person. I need to stake out a time each morning to write.

Here's my plan for the week, then. Today I'm going to insert The Wicked Stepsister (that's the sequel's working title) into a template and format it. Monday-Friday this week, I'm going to write from 5:45-6:15 a.m. daily. Half an hour isn't much, but if I also use some of my daily hour of walking to plan how I'll use my writing time, I ought to be able to get a lot done. It all adds up, it really does. Even if I write only two pages a day, five days a week--well, Just Like Magic is about 180 pages long. That's 18 weeks for a rough draft. I can live with that.

Tune in next week to see how it's going!

Back to editing (what fun!)

So. The proof is here. (Not in the pudding.)

I got the book on Tuesday, gave it to my mom to read on Wednesday, and got it back from her on Saturday (along with her ideas for a sequel! Well, that's good, she liked the characters enough to want to read more about them!)

Now it's time for the serious stuff. Me, the book, and a pencil.

I'm reading it backwards. I'm reading it aloud. I'm reading it aloud backwards. Thank goodness the cat doesn't mind. I'm going as slowly as I can, but it's really hard not to speed up. I'm doing no more than six pages at a time. And I'm finding errors.

Frankly, I am appalled at how many errors I have already found. I have only gone through the first eleven pages of the book, and here's the tally:

     Nine sentences that need rewriting;
     Eight punctuation errors;
     Two capitalization errors;
     and a partridge in a pear tree (not).

Oh, well, at least I'm catching them now, though I feel sure I'm not going to find them all. I plan to have a couple of other people read the proof, too, so that should help. And I'm telling myself that there are more errors in the first chapter because that's the one that's been rewritten so much recently.

My posting schedule will be erratic over the next two weeks (I'm on vacation). But you can pretty much picture me going through the book, pencil in hand, as in the photo above. It'll take a couple of weeks to get through it, I'm sure.