Monday, August 20, 2012

Editing Mode

Since coming back to full-time writing status I've taken it upon myself to start editing the manuscript for the practical purpose of editing (obviously) and as a way to re-familiarize myself with the story. There were some finer points I had forgotten about, and even found one small plot hole that I was able to fix easily.

Then a fellow writer friend mentioned to me all the occurrences of "s/he could feel" and after doing a search I found more than a dozen of those exact phrases. So I corrected them... Then I wondered what other things I should be looking for and found one common word that is overused in a manuscript is "s/he said". So I did another search for "said" throughout the manuscript... Oh boy... 134 instances. Not all of them were awful but most of them were. I actually taped a piece of paper on the wall with dozens of synonyms for "said" and referenced that for all 134 instances of "said". It took quite a few hours.

I guess this is the part of writing that is the least fun. It's great knowing that the manuscript will be more polished and less amateur once it is published, but the sheer amount of work is daunting at best. I've got my work cut out for me.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Return to Writing

I took about 3 weeks off for finals and a little post-term laziness but now it's back to writing and finishing "Zoe Thanatos". My mind feels refreshed but now I'm tempted to go on an editing spree rather than just finishing up and then editing. What to do, what to do!

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Attacked by a Mountain Lion

Since installing Mountain Lion on my MacBook Pro last night my computer has frozen twice. Seriously?! I thought that was just a Windows problem! I'm having to do. Force restart now since I don't know what the Apple equivalent of control-alt-delete is. Hopefully the outline of my final paper is save and secure in Google Docs!*fingers crossed*

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Writing on Hold (for now)

Just as I was nearing completion on one of the final three chapters, I have hit a wall. I found myself sitting at the screen staring at Pages (word processor for the Mac in case you didn't know) and often getting distracted on Pinterest and Tumblr. Not to mention how I was also neglecting school work. Now, a few weeks ago I said I was hoping to have the first draft of the book done by now but that didn't happen and I found the block was also preventing me from adequately focusing on my school work. I have, therefore, decided to take a small break from writing so that I can focus on these final tasks in school and I don't have to worry about forcing out pages in the manuscript. Hopefully a nice break will refresh my mind so. Can finish up these last few chapters and finally get on with editing, revising, and rewriting.