I don’t know why, but I seem to mentally be ahead of the current date. It feels like July to me, maybe because the usually 101 degree temperatures I have this time of year have been 70’s and 80’s, which back in New England would be typical July weather.
My goal for this year was to have four novels completely through the edit process and ready for publication. And so, that’s what I’ve been doing. A little writing here and there, but for the most part, I’ve cut far more words than I’ve written.
I’m also finishing up some long overdue projects – but my focus has been on editing. Lots of editing. I’ve been struggling with my first novel, which was completed several years ago before I learned anything about writing – and that was a huge mistake, one I’ve strongly advised everyone rectify before you write your first novel!
The decision was to cut off a third of the novel – painful, but it lets me get to where I’m going, and perhaps take all the items I left out and repackage them for a prequel. An agent who was a member of a writing group I was part of had listened to my problem, and suggested splitting it into two novels and my response at the time is one of those things that I always recommend you answer an agent with – “I don’t have enough to carry the story.” He was impressed with the response. See, I practice what I preach.
That’s not to say I WON’T have enough story to re-use that! I can see how to do it, but it would require massive changes to the first novel, and… no. I’m not about to do that.
The biggest key to all my productivity which actually really didn’t get productive until recently was to adapt Asana to my writing process using the Board form rather than the list form, putting the program on my phone, and incessantly poking at the Novel Process board I use. I have another one I’ve written for video work, and it’s roughly similar. When you first devise your work throughput system, you have to fiddle with it a lot at first. Once you’ve finshed one book or video with it, you can lock it in place.
It’s going to seriously be a hurtle to get four books publish ready. I’m working on them constantly, and I may end up with two one and two more close. I’ll just say that it really takes far longer to edit a novel than to write it.
We’ll see how I do by December!
