Writing Update: Polishing

During the past two weeks, I have continued my line edit of Draft 5 to polish at the sentence level. This part of the process has been a lot of fun, especially because I prefer to make notes for sentence-level revisions by hand, so I’ve gotten the chance to re-familiarize myself with all the copyeditor’s marks I learned in the editing minor at BYU. Maybe it’s dorky that I find that fun, but whatever.

It’s been difficult to find the time to write because my maternity leave ended last week and I went back to work part-time, so between working and taking care of my son, there isn’t a lot of downtime. It’s mostly just sneaking in 5 minutes here and there, so work on this draft has been slower than I’d like. But I know I’m not the only writer who has to do it this way.

The PDF I’m editing is 199 pages. I’ll use that to track my progress through this draft, since I won’t be able to see my MS wordcount until I’ve made all the edits in Scrivener.

Draft progress so far: page 132 of 199

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Getting Back Into It

I’m back!!

I know I disappeared on here for a lo-o-o-ong time. It was for a good reason, though. I had a baby!

It turns out that being an expectant mother for 9 months and then being a new parent immediately after that is wonderful, but also busy and exhausting, so during that time I took a break from updating the writing blog and decided to just focus on the important stuff–my baby, and the writing itself.

During the past year, this is what I accomplished:

• Finished the revisions on Draft 3 of HYBRID. This new version became Draft 4.
• Did more world building.
• Revised Draft 4. This version became Draft 5.
• Did even more world building.
• Revised Draft 5. A lot.
• My current MS word count: ???????? Who knows. I’d guess still around 65,000 words. I’ll have to check Scrivener during my son’s next naptime.

I am now in the process of polishing Draft 5 at the sentence level. This polished draft will become Draft 6. Once it’s done, I will be at a point where I don’t know how else to improve the manuscript (though I will be the first to admit that it is far from perfect!).

Which means that it will be time to proceed to the Querying Stage.

That’s too scary to think about though, so for now, my updates will focus on the task at hand: polishing! Which is my favorite part of the revision process.

Writing Update

This week, I finished my master edit on the third draft of HYBRID!!! *happy dances* It feels so good to have finished a few drafts now. I have a much better feel for the story and for the characters than I did when I first started.

I also started writing a fantasy short story. This is new territory for me, because my ideas are usually better implemented as novels, not short stories. But I had the idea for this story a few weeks ago, and I thought it would just be so much fun to write. So I’m giving it a try. I have no idea what I’ll do with it when it’s finished. But it’s been a nice break for my brain, which has been in sci-fi mode for such a long time at this point.

Words edited (HYBRID): 35,571

Approximate manuscript word count (HYBRID): 62,000

Words written (short story): ??? I write all my first drafts by hand, so I don’t know how many words I have on the short story. Probably a couple thousand, if that.

Tool of the Week: Toggl

Every so often, I’m going to post about a writing tool I’ve been using, how I’ve been using it, and why it works for me. I always like to read from other writers what tools and techniques they use. Since I’m still learning and probably always will be, I’m often trying out new apps, tricks, and processes to figure out what works and what doesn’t (for example, I didn’t realize I was an outliner until a couple of years ago). So I’m excited to share the tools I like and the new tools I discover in the hopes that one day, it’ll help another writer along in his or her own quest for writerly success!

The tool I have used the most this week is Toggl.

Storytelling Superpower

Being a college graduate is major wish-fulfillment for me because I get to come home from work and write as much as I can instead of doing homework first, like I have done for pretty much my entire life. And it’s glorious. I get to read what I want (no modernism!). I get to write what I want (no papers!). And I love that I’ve been able to see myself make progress in my craft even in just the (almost) year since I graduated.