No, my precious!

Since I am not a published author and I am too lazy to come up with my own, I have been using Nathan Bransford's revising checklist to edit my book. And this was how I felt when I first read his list: 

(oh my God my book is pathetic why did I start writing it in the first place MY LIFE SUCKS)

My book needed help. A lot of it. So, for a couple of weeks I danced around the prospect of actually sitting down and editing it. And finally, about a week ago, a dived headfirst into the process. 

Tips on How to Start and Carry Out the Editing Process:

1. Be a lazy jerk. 

Give your work to other people. And why not? Throw in the revising checklist, too. 

There's only so far you can go on your own. As you read your own writing, it's sometimes hard to put yourself in the mindset of a casual reader. If you give your work to other people, you are likely to get feedback that points out mistakes you wouldn't have noticed on your own. 

2. Make your characters your BFFLs. 

When it comes to your characters, don't concern yourself with personality, body expressions, or tone of voice. Focus on one thing: motivation. Why does that character exist? What is the purpose of that character in terms of plot? As long as you CONSTANTLY have your characters' motivations in mind, the rest will almost certainly fall into place. 

If you ask yourself, "What is my character's motivation?" and you can't come up with an answer, TAKE THAT CHARACTER OUT. Flat characters, or useless characters, do nothing to support the book, so you might as well remove them.ed

3. If it doesn't help the plot, TAKE IT OUT (please note how that was in all caps). 

Whether it's characters, scenes, or subplots, if it doesn't help the overall plot line, it's not worth keeping it. Don't concern yourself with word count. It's quality, not quantity. 

Make sure EVERY SINGLE SCENE brings the plot forward in some way. Every other scene should involve the main conflict in some form. If not, take it out. 

4. No, my precious! 

As you edit, try not to look at your writing as your own writing. Look at it as someone else's writing. Slash and tear at it as much as you can. Be ruthless. That way, you can (partly)

overcome the need to protect your writing as though it is your precious. 

Hope that helps! 

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo
National Novel Writing Month

In my quest to write a novel in one school year, I have discovered the wonders of NaNo. 
What is NaNo about, you ask?

It's writing a novel. 
In one month. 
50,000 words long. 

NaNo is a pretty awesome opportunity for writers. It is a chance to loosen up and write down something that has not been thought through at all and will probably be the craziest thing you've ever written. 

But that's okay. Aren't the most amazing things you've ever read also the craziest, most unique things you've ever read?



Come on, a guy living in a hole in a ground? That's a guy with no life, not a mobbit. Wait, a hobbit? 
Kids killing kids? What kind of world is that? Do you actually think that anyone would read something that depressing?
A kid who goes to school at a magical wizard school? Excuse me, but do you think we're five year olds? 



Imagination sometimes comes in a hurry. When you have a short span of time (like a month), your brain is pulling things out of the air. (Please imagine, for a moment, the time when you did not study for a test and in the last five minutes of exam time you wrote down whatever you could think of even though it didn't make complete sense). 

About 100% percent of the time when you're writing your 50,000 NaNo words, whatever you write down is not perfect. 
But it's probably good. 

And there are a lot of people who worked with good and made awesome, right?

*cough cough J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien, Suzanne Collins cough cough*

There may be a future for your NaNo novel. But you have to make it. 

P.S.  I love the coffee cup on the NaNo emblem-thingy (because that's what NaNo is all about). 

Editor Schmeditor

Ever have that awful feeling in your stomach when someone is looking at your writing and you want to run away and hide? Have you ever had that feeling where you suddenly realize that what you wrote was just a bunch of nonsense from the moment that idea popped into your head, and you secretly wish that you could pluck the paper from the reader's hand and skip away like a magical elf screaming, "You'll never get me"? 

Ignore it, please. Our magical elves need to stay hidden.

Often, when somebody's reading my writing, I try to let my mind return to the moment when I'd been proud of that piece of writing, when I'd written down something I knew was beautiful, and I knew was brilliant. I bask in the warmth of the magic I'd written, the magic that is within that essay my reader is, at that moment, reading. And I promise myself that I will not let that magic be cut out and thrown away. I promise myself that I will make the final draft look like the older and more beautiful version of draft one, not some plastic Barbie doll perfection that I will never call mine. 

When someone edits your draft or requests a change in the writing, do it. Don't feel like the editor is a monster who is taking away your baby. The magic about editing is that you choose how you change your writing. Your writing's about you, no one else. The editor is not the writer. The editor is not the one who put his life into the writing. Yes, fix the imperfections. 

But fix them your way.