It might not have escaped your notice that I failed to finish editing Dominion of the Damned in time to take advantage of those Create Space coupons I worked so hard to win in last year’s NaNoWriMo before they expired. Between working the new contract job, working for my own clients and hurrying to overhaul our design website to (hopefully) appeal to a more high-end clientele, well, something had to give, and that something was my writing time. Which has made for a very stressed and cranky Jean over the last six weeks or so. So starting today I’m determined to get back on the writing & editing horse.
I suppose it’s just as well that I missed my deadline, though. I have some excellent beta notes from an excellent writer whom I was privileged enough to have read my last draft, and I confess I was skipping over some of the feedback that would require major overhauling of scenes in the race to beat that coupon expiration date. I actually stopped rushing the edits about a week before the deadline, because I realized that taking the time and effort to overhaul those scenes and make this book the best it can be will probably sell a lot more copies than being able to give away free copies of a mediocre book. And then suddenly this editing process became a lot more daunting, and see above re: no time for it.
So today’s editing session was more about just trying to get my head back into the story, to figure out where I left off, what I needed to go back and fix, etc. I think I need to read it again from the beginning with the changes I already made, and add my own notes to my beta readers’ notes, and this time take my time with it to make sure I get it right. And it’s going to be a real challenge because I can only carve out about 30 minutes a day to focus on it; but that’s 30 more minutes of attention than it’s been getting, and slow, baby-step progress is better than no progress. Right? Please tell me I’m right.
You! Are! Right!
(I am similarly stuck with my stupid, stupid manuscript and I will borrow inspiration from your newly recharged focus and get my ass back in the game too. GO US.)
Yes. WE CAN DO EET!
You are definitely right! There are some days when I sit down to write and all I get done in my allotted time might be 30 minutes of daydreaming all the things I could write. But sometimes that’s what needs to happen before I can finish what I’m working on. The last poem I worked on I spent several writing sessions staring at, repeating the first few lines, and daydreaming. Then suddenly I sat down and wrote nearly 4 drafts back-to-back and finished it. Sometimes our brains have to get in the groove. So even if you only have 30 minutes, as long as you commit that 30 minutes to thinking about / reading / writing on your work… it’s progress! Writing is the output of our work, but there’s a whole lot of input that goes on behind-the-scenes. It may look like we aren’t doing anything, but we are! =)