Tag Archives: editing

The fix

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I’ve been thinking about the problem that has had my stymied for the past several weeks. I just couldn’t find a way around this little stumbling block and I was at a stand-still. I’ll admit that even though my goal is to publish this year, I wanted to give up and move on to another project, one that I hope would be far easier to complete.

But I’m not one to give up so easily. While I waited patiently at work for customers to show up, and yes I worked on Mother’s Day, I pulled out a sheet of paper and started to jot down notes.

Who’s after Jasmine?

I began by writing down the names of my characters, the ones who are the most likely suspect to be terrorizing my main character, detailing their history and the reason why they may be stalking her. As I scribbled my notes, I had one of those moments of brilliance. I may have figured out how to save my story! I finally had my Eureka! moment.

And now the dread washes over me, hours after that brief elation. I realized that by figuring out how to fix what’s wrong with the story I would have to sit down and introduce a new character. Well, that not quite true. My savior is already in the book, but they haven’t been fleshed out thoroughly. My task is to beef up their part, including their motivation for seeking out Jasmine. Luckily, that all came to me while I jotted down my notes throughout the day.

I’m excited about this. The way the story ends has bothered me for some time. One of my beta-readers actually called me out on how I resolved the story. I made a liar out of my character. They are not duplicitous in any way. Awkward? Yes, but not malicious nor psychotic. Now, that character can be true to themselves while this new character gets to enjoy a promotion of a sort and fully embrace a role that I could never really develop.

It should only take a few minor rewrites to incorporate them into the narrative. I’ll have to tweak some dialogue and create a few key scenes along the way, but as I have already deleted some other scenes, I should do so seamlessly, or at least that’s my hope.

To think that I’ve been wracking my brains in search of an answer and all it took for me to find it was to write it down. It allowed me to focus on the problem while not confronting the issue. It worked itself out organically. I just hope I do it justice. Also, I hope I remember how to fix it.

Hi! Remember me?

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Happy Friday to all you gorgeous people out there. I hope you’re staying nice and dry today. It’s been a heck of a week in the Texas Panhandle and South Plains. We’re being inundated with rain, with places about an hour or two south literally under water. I know Lubbock has experienced some flooding and Tulia some impressive hail. I woke up to see a few tornado warnings and we’re under a tornado watch. Ah, springtime in Texas!

I have to say it’s better than the alternative, drought. I know the farmers in the area are thankful for the rain. It saves on irrigation, though they aren’t able to go out and work on the crops. Knowing our climate, the typical high-pressure systems that dominate during the summer months will set up, drying us up quickly and we’ll be praying for rain very soon.

But enough banal talk. I’ve been quiet the past two weeks. I haven’t had anything to say, not that I have any new worth sharing at the moment. I got to the point where I was repeating the same tired message, I’m working on it, I hope to be finished soon, yada yada yada. So where am I now?

I’m working on it. I hope to be finished soon. Yada yada yada.

I have found someone to edit my book. That’s exciting. We settled on a price, which is more than I want to spend but is in reality an extremely reasonable price. The editing process will consist almost entirely of proofreading my work, checking for grammar and punctuation. I wish I could afford a content editor to check for continuity, story line development and whatever it is they do. I’m still very much a novice at this. I think I need a mentor.

I’ll get it. I’m in no hurry. I’m enjoying the leisure of the journey, though I do eventually want to get to my destination. I’ll spend my day off today working on my copy. I’m halfway through but have a ton left to correct. Honestly, I wish I would have planned this novel to begin with. I’m beginning to so the advantage of being a planner vs. being a pantser. Also, I want to be done so I can work on other projects.

 

 

Needs

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I had planned on getting an early start today. My schedule at work had me working from 5:45 this morning until 2:45 this afternoon. By 4:00, I should have been here at home, manuscript beside me while I imputed the corrections into my laptop. My plans never seem to pan out. Damn you!

I ended up working a few hours late, having dinner with a friend, and not getting home until 8:00. Still plenty of time to get some work in on my writing, but instead I zoned out a bit, the exhaustion from a long day forcing me to shut my eyes for a bit. I don’t work tomorrow, so I’m planning on staying up a little longer and getting some editing done. I also plan on hitting it hard tomorrow. I wonder if my plan will happen.

I’m not complaining about my day. It was worth it, but today made me think about my future. Actually, I’ve been thinking about it off and on for the past several days. I’ll be 39 years old next week. I have lets say 25 to 30 years left of a working career. Do I want to be where I am no for the next 30 years? Is retail the place I want to be?

The answer is a resounding no. I don’t like what I’m doing. There’s no job security, no job satisfaction. I’m tearing my body down for an impersonal corporation that doesn’t care about me. It’s only concern is to make money for itself, and for its shareholders. Though I do believe in a free market society, I have to be frank and say that my needs are not being met.

Which brings me to consider what my needs are. My basic needs are being met. What I’m missing, and what I want and need the most is my independence. That need requires a certain level of financial security, which I don’t have. More than that, what I really need is something that fulfills me. I may need a job to pay the bills, but what of me? What do I need of my life to truly live?

Love and family? Yes. A career I enjoy? Certainly. The ability to travel and learn? Absolutely! The one thing I want out of life is to communicate my thoughts. Life is too short. I want to make an impression on the world, that though life is frail and it must end, there are things about me that mattered. I want to know that I had a positive impact on someone’s life.

So I write. That is what I need to live. I read and I learn so that I can turn around and put into words the thoughts and emotions that I have. I have things to say and I want to do the best I can to say them in a thought-provoking manner. I don’t want to die without saying what I need to say. I want to live on.

I didn’t mean to go so dark. There is no impending death on the horizon, or at least I hope not! I’m looking to the future and I can see myself stuck doing what I’m doing now. That’s easy to see. It’s what I fear the most. What I can’t see is the path obscured by doubt and the unknown. It scares me, but it calls to me because that’s the path that leads to immortality.

What will that take? It’ll take a level of dedication to my dream that will test the limits of my endurance. I’ll have to sacrifice and struggle to go where I want to go. I have to be free to fail, and failure is a familiar foe. I also have to be willing to find any measure of success.

As I continue to work on my writing, that’s the thought that motivates and tortures me. I have to stop dreaming the dream. It’s time to start realizing that same dream with my labor. I’ve already started down that path. Starting is not the issue. What trips me up is pushing myself until I reach the goal line. Starting is easy. I’m just unsure how to find the end. I could use a mentor and a coach in my life to help me along.

 

Out of story, well sort of

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I ran out of story to edit! Okay, that’s not entirely true. I still have half the book to do, but I hadn’t gotten around to printing it yet. In the mean time, I’ll enter what I do have onto my computer and save it. Once I’m done, I’ll print off the other half and get started with that. It’s so simple!

But it’ll have to wait until tomorrow. It’s late and I have to work in the morning. Still, going though four chapters is impressive. There were only a few minor changes. I fear the bulk of what I need to rewrite is still ahead of me.

Yikes!

Coffee and mating rituals of the young and obnoxious

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Yesterday evening I worked on my book at a coffee shop. I know it’s cliché, but it’s nice to get out of the house for a while and visit places where actual living people dwell during the daylight hours. There was the added bonus of getting a high dose of caffeine. Score!

As I sat alone in the corner of the coffee shop, minding my own business, I couldn’t help but overhear an obnoxiously loud college-aged boy going on and on about his class schedules and all the essays he needed to write. I glanced upwards and he was standing about ten feet away from, and from the looks of it, trying to impress a similarly aged, and I have to say, very attractive young woman.

It’s not the obvious primping that bothered me so much. No, I lie. I wanted to punch the douchebag square in the face. I already have a predisposed hatred to overly cocky ass holes like him, and a similar hatred to women stupid enough to fall for it. But it did get me thinking, have I ever engaged in such displays? If so, did some other guy want to punch me in the face? Did the girl fall for it?

I don’t have a good answer for you. I want to say that I doubt very much that I’ve ever behaved thusly, mainly because I rarely interact with other people. For example, I went to a bar ages ago with a coworker. A woman, one that I never met before, tried to talk to me. I gave very short, concise answers, so much so that I annoyed her and she turned to my friend and called me an asshole. Whoops! I don’t mean to give off that impression!

But then again, sometimes I’ve been caught primping for someone I find attractive and I don’t even realize that I’m doing it. It’s a bit embarrassing when your jerk friend calls you out on it. It’s good for a laugh later but it’s a bit of a bummer at the time.

Our mating rituals – and yes, the little dance you were doing boy was very much a mating ritual – are complex and sometimes to the observer, just plain hilarious. Unless you’re doing it where I can hear you and I’m trying to work on my book. In that case, I’ll label you a douchebag and call you out for it on my blog. And you attractive young woman? You’re an idiot if you fell for it. On the other hand, if I had been the man trying to win your attention and you found me charming, then obviously you would have been an intelligent and discerning human being, worthy of being lavished praise for the world to hear.

In other words, I’m getting too old for this shit and I’m obviously jealous. I should probably let it go, but at least the coffee was good.