Tag-Archive for » earth shatterer «
So I’ve finished typing in all of my edits for Earth Shatterer. It became pretty easy towards the end as I didn’t see much to really change. A few words here and there but nothing major. So when I looked at the ending word count I noticed that I’ve chopped a solid 9,000 words from the previous draft. Not a bad feat. That’s 9,000 unnecessary words gone. But now that leaves me with a word count that’s leaning more towards middle grade than young adult. Crap.
I want the count at at least 50,000 so puffing it up with another 4,000 words isn’t that big of a deal. I don’t want it to be too bare bones and I know a few places where I can go into fleshier detail about some things. But still. It’s a see-saw man, I swear.
Well, at least I don’t have to do another total rewrite. I’m pretty happy with what I have. The first chapter needs to be reworded a bit as the voice is a little off but overall, I’m satisfied. Now it’d be nice if I can be done with it already! I’m so close!
The third full edit of ES is officially done. I was right. The major hurdle of rewriting the beginning was done before I took the multi-month break, although my dumb ass broke in the middle of a chapter. Fun times trying to get back into that one. Of course, I make all edits by hand so now I have to actually type everything in to see where I stand with my word count. I’m really hoping it’s not under 50,000. I was able to whittle down the chapters from 26 to 23. Not that that means anything for word count but I did a lot of consolidating and eliminating of unnecessary wordage. The story as a whole is a little less snarky, serious when it needs to be serious. The tone is definitely more natural.
I don’t know if this makes me weird but I love noticing my own comfort phrases. I’m sure all writers have them. I tend to use “out of the corner of his eye,” “looked up,” “choked on his heart” (or a variation of it) and a few others quite a bit. Had to strike a lot of those. I love noticing those because it means I’m not failing as a self-editor. Noticing my own redundancies is a good thing, I think.
I started to lull around the late teens, having bouts of “OMG THIS SUX!!!” but once I got to the end, I realized how much I liked it. I don’t know if that’s something I should be worried about or grateful for. I should like my own book although right now I’m about 10 seconds from setting the thing on fire because I’ve edited it so much. I can’t edit it anymore. I think, as writers, we need to put our foot down on our own full edits. If we don’t, it’ll get to a point where we’ve changed and mutilated so much of the original story that it’s not even the same beast anymore. Plus, I don’t think any writer would stop editing one work. They’d always find something wrong, something to change, so it gets to a point where we need to utilize our self-control and tell ourselves to stop. This third run was it. I’m not making any more major changes unless absolutely necessary (meaning like the story’s totally FUBAR if I don’t). Small stuff, spelling, a few word choices, things like that. The foot’s going down.
I’m not going to make the January 25th start date for Amazon’s contest. But I am hoping to finish the manuscript up this week and I will make the final February 5th deadline. Who needs sleep? I just need to pray to the writing gods that they don’t hit their 5,000 manuscript maximum before I can get my entry in. I’ll have no one to blame but my procrastinating self if I don’t get it in but I won’t be any less upset about it. I really want to enter this contest and I really want to start querying. The thought alone makes me want to throw up but it’s time. My manuscripts about to graduate and I need to set it free in the real world.
*sigh* They grow up so quickly.
So I want to get my entry ready before January 25th for Amazon since they’re only going to be accepting the first 5,000 entries for each portion of the contest. Aside from the manuscript (duh), I need a hook. I hate these things. There’s nothing that sucks more than condensing 55,000 words into 100-word catching summary. Why not just rake my body with rusty nails while you’re at it?
So I’ve started putting a hook together. I’ve got a sentence. Sort of. I’m still rewording it, working it around, because it’s not sitting right with me. I think it’s the goo gun part. But I just don’t think it’s snappy enough. What do you think? Would this lure you in? Or at least intrigue you?
It’s just another earthquake until Sylfaerie Stallone pistol-whips someone with a goo gun.
I feel it’s a little too wordy. Not a lot. Just a little. Is it ‘goo gun?’ ‘Someone?’ Should Sylfaerie just bring the beat on instead of pistol-whipping? But I like pistol-whip. I want tight. Like spandex on a fat person. Help!
To enter Earth Shatterer into Amazon’s Breakout Novel competition for YA.
It gives me the ass fire I need to finish editing it plus a deadline. Here’s hoping I don’t forget this one. And me not wanting to light my manuscript on fire when I pick it back up.
It’s got me down, man. I swear. I’ve been trying to figure out how long I’ve been working on this last edit on Earth Shatterer and I’m figuring, you know, a month. Maybe two.
Then I caught something on my Myspace . . . a post I’d written about starting the edit again . . . at the beginning of June . . .
Yup. That sounds about right considering that’s when I got the last of my beta input and started on the real overhaul.
Beginning of June. Four months. And I’m on chapter five. I think this says something.
It says I need to step away. It’s not taking me this long for it for nothing (wow, let’s beat on grammar some more, shall we?). I’ve been working on it pretty much nonstop (save for a couple little breaks) since February, was it? Maybe March? Yeah, I know. I understand that when my work actually gets to print, I won’t have the luxury of taking my sweet ass time getting the edits done. Deadlines and all. The thing is, deadlines are surefire motivating factors for me and personal deadlines don’t really work. Not for me. Because if I don’t meet them, nothing happens. I just reset. Bad mentality, I know, but that’s how I look at it.
So while I have the opportunity to take my sweet ass time working through these edits, I’m going to step away from my manuscript (just as I’m getting to the actual blending instead of total rewriting, another thing that really got on me) and do some side writing. I’m entering a very short piece into a teen lit Halloween contest on Absolute Write. It’s horror and I’m actually pretty proud of it. I want to write a little more branching out on my first Write It Wednesday piece about the crazy roommate and vampires. I want to write a Coney Island Psychic short and mainly, I want to read as much horror as I can this month. It’s a little bit of a goal of mine to make a dent in my massive sitting TBR pile and I can double up on that challenge (which actually is a challenge hosted by another review blog) but a YA challenge that I’ve let go stagnant because I went OCD on my ARCs and I’ve been reading them by pub date.
I also got my friend Jev’s newly released eNovella titled “Swan Song” which is his kick ass version of vampires. It’s available on Amazon (author name Jevron McCrory, from London) if anyone’s interested. 
Since I can’t take it anywhere with me, that would mean denting into writing time anyway to get it read. And I want to read it. So there’s that too.
I feel like I’m making excuses and I do feel guilty for letting my manuscript sit even longer but it’s not like I’ve stopped writing entirely. And I know I have an agent that’s waiting on a manuscript (sort of, she knew when she met me that I was in the middle of writing my first book so she was keen to waiting, and then I had to scrap that and wrote the second which is still being edited) but the way I see it, I would think they would rather wait a reasonable amount of time (this was March of 2008 and I’ve gone through 2 manuscripts, it’s not like I’m still toiling at the one) for something that they can actually sell instead of a piece of shit that’ll just get tossed anyway. I remember reading something about that on Kristin Nelson’s blog. She’d rather wait for a good manuscript instead of getting something rushed.
I just think my brain needs a bit of a reboot. I’m not out of ideas or anything on Earth Shatterer. Not even close. I’ve just been up to my eyeballs in it month after month after month that I really just need some space from it for a little while. And the little stories brewing in my head want to come out and play! But they totally understand that when it’s time to get back to work on ES, they must go back inside for a little while. They can’t distract me from the bigger project! Nothing will ever get finished if I allow that to happen!
So I’m having to blend in more of the new work than I thought. I’m moving onto the third totally re-written chapter of the book and I swear, I’m so close to really just blending stuff in instead of totally rewriting it. I’m not aiming to rewrite the entire book but I’m working in elements of what’s already there into something refurbished and more plot-advancing. I might cry if I had to rewrite the entire thing. I’ll leave that to Diamond Crier.
But I’m noticing a few changes in the characters as I rewrite those first few chapters. Michael’s coming more into himself (always a good thing) and I think he might be a touch unreliable. He’s taken on a slight Rambo exaggeration issue that wasn’t there in the first one. It’s not all crazy he runs around in a bandanna making machine gun noises or anything like that. But he just might have a thing for war movies.
And Zana has evened out and I must say, thank god. She’s not uber-polarizing mega bitch anymore. She’s still kind of bitchy but not as one-sided like she used to be. That’ll make for some tweaking later on in the story but it’s manageable.
Crater’s a slightly different too. Instead of acting like a dog and all afraid of the tree, he’s happy about it, as human Crater would be. He is, after all, a human stuck in a dog body. The gateway opening would mean he gets to go back home, something he’d be excited about. So slight change in demeanor for him. And no contrived explanation later on. Yay!
Hopefully this next chapter will be the end of the total rewrite and it’ll just be a world of tweak from there on out. Hopefully.
