Saturday, May 26, 2018

The tedious side of #amwriting

I wrote "The End" to my latest manuscript a week or two ago. I finished "a month early", according to my internal deadline.

Now I'm on the tedious part of writing -- editing. I'm not ready to do a content read-through yet. I need to wait until the story is at least somewhat out of my head. But I did do my Abused Word Search. You know the ones, the overused words that get tossed in when you do that first draft.

I have about 100 words that I search for, one at a time, throughout all 109,500 words of the manuscript. Along the way I rewrite, search my thesaurus, and re-read bits and pieces to see what can be changed. It's mind-blowingly tedious.

Along with that, I'm setting up a new wiki to keep track of details in my book. I was able to migrate all the pages from my old wiki (which is folding in September). Now I have to go through and set up a new wiki, which means learning a new scripting language, new programming parameters, and ... well, figure I'm setting up a new website from scratch.

Yes, June will be one fun month of programming and editing. Sigh. But you know what -- it's also useful, because I have a story idea percolating in the back of my mind and this tedious stuff lets me play with ideas while I'm doing mind-numbing things. So I guess it's win after all ... if I can just get through it without my head exploding ...

J L
jayellwilson.com

6 comments:

Brenda Whiteside said...

All of it sounds familiar for how I work, except for the wiki thing. Have no idea what you're talking about. What is it and what does it do?

Diane Burton said...

Ditto what Brenda asked about wiki. I'm at about the same spot you are with editing on my wip. good luck!

Susan Coryell said...

We al discover little helping guides as we continue to write. Mine: Write the synopsis as I go over the first self-editing. Saves a lot of heartache (and time) later on. Nice post. Thanks!

Leah St. James said...

I do the same with the overused words. But, uh...wiki-what?? :-)

Jannine Gallant said...

I don't generally overuse common words. I pick a phrase de book to overuse. It's different every time, and I never know what it's going to be until my CP tells me. Generally it's an action tag. We all have our quirks!

remullins said...

Please explain wiki