The penultimate week
The MS stands at a couple of hundred words less than 35k. But the work I’ve been doing on it this week isn’t really reflected in wordcount. I’ve been doing a lot of highlighting (what’s immediate scene, what’s narrative summary is one highlighted file. The different character’s dialogue is another) and marking up for editing. I think as soon as I finished the last chapter my brain has switched to editing mode. There are a couple of dodgy scenes that need to be rewritten and/or pumped up but that’s been shuffled into editing.
Self-editing is a special kind of hell. All rewriting is rewriting and some people are good at getting a splurge of words down and then cutting it into shape. But I’m an underwriter (as if you haven’t noticed) so self-editing for me is generally plumping up the prose – which is always too spare. Part of being spare is stylistic of course so not plumping too much is a thing – but do I trust myself as a reader? (not of my own writing is the answer) so I’m now setting up a bunch of beta readers too.
My main aim from this 100 days was to get a good draft to edit and I may have sneakily started to get it ready to edit before the 100 days are up. Which is another way of saying, to myself, that I’d better finish off those dodgy scenes by the end of next week…
Happy Reading & Happy Writing!
petewsutton 