Edits and Future Plans

Day two of editing... twenty pages into the original manuscript. This is a painful process. Anybody got an aspirin?

Since I have the liberty of making this up as I go along, I'm thinking time limit instead of page goal for editing. Such as, spending a solid two hours on pages, then taking a break. I'm overwhelmed... there's a lot, I mean a LOT of extra words on these pages. My original first twenty pages has been cut down to twelve. Whoo! On the plus side, I want my manuscript to be smaller, so this is a good thing!

It's pretty exciting to go back over the edited copy. It reads MUCH faster and the clunks are really starting to smooth out. I'm learning so much in this process and it's JUST THE SECOND DAY. How lucky are we to be writers, huh? This is the coolest feeling ever.

Do you guys work on writing new stuff while you're editing your manuscript? It's two very different parts of my brain and right now the idea seems laughable to me. Maybe it'll get easier the deeper I get into the book. I want to at least keep working on short stories to beef up my portfolio. The latest is almost ready to go out into circulation. I've got another two ideas I can work on, and then there's other shorts I've got half-finished that I can polish up. Problem is, after three or four hours of editing I'm zonked. That plus the Clark Kent job is all I can handle at the moment.

But I do want to continue moving forward so even if I can't produce new words I am researching for the next project, little by little. The short stories are fun distractions, but I'm ready to tackle another novel. I don't want to start it until this one has gone through its first big edit, though. I have an inkling of an idea for a book, and it's pretty interesting. I've been researching things like Paradise Lost, the War Between the States, the King James Bible, 18th century writers, Voltaire, British cemeteries, and pirates.

Yes, pirates! Pirate ghosts! They might make an appearance in my next book... we'll just have to see, won't we? ;)

All right... Somebody hand me a machete, I'm going back in...