July Snippets

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It's time again for the next installment of Katie's monthly snippets meme!  (For those of you participating in her "Actually Finishing Something July," this is great incentive to share clips of your recent scribbles.  Just saying.)  I haven't done much writing proper in July, other than the odd scene scribbled out in the odder notebook, but I did crank out several chapters in June, so I have things to feature.

july snippets

There was no backing out now, nor would Tip have done it if he could have; he was far too bull-headed, and far too keenly aware of it. Wordlessly he began to roll back his sleeves, ever keeping an eye on Lewis’ movements, the familiar, comforting thrill of the fight running spider-wise across his skin. The sun sparking between the oak leaves made the shadows and the light run wild while the two of them adjusted their positions, and as it lit Lewis’ face for just a moment, Tip saw that he had been wrong: this man was slow at nothing. 

James protested again, but the words fell, as always, on deaf ears.

- the white sail's shaking

“My sanity is of no consequence to you.”

- the white sail's shaking

Overhead a seaman was attempting to tune his fiddle in a fit of yowls and twangs. Another called out that the strings would be wet, and a third, louder than his fellows, retorted that it made no difference for the fiddle made little enough music as it was. Then the argument dropped out of hearing beneath the shrill singsong of the wind. The lamp-flame wavered again and a sorcerous light leapt up around Charlie as, rising sharply, he began to pace the quarters — up and down, white and blue alike turned faded orange in the glow, the shadows backing and surging.

- the white sail's shaking

One of the loose arms of Marta’s shirt fluttered against Tip; the breeze had begun to shift at last, the tide having turned outward a long time ago. No moon tonight, he thought once, casting another glance at the sky, and the world seemed all the more desolate for its loss.

- the white sail's shaking

“Why,” he said, “what a funny pair of jack-in-the-boxes you two are!”

- the white sail's shaking

The windows cast downward glances at him, disapproving of him in their cool way. “Dear, dear,” the building murmured to the house on the other side of the iron fence, “who on earth is that dirty fellow? He’s getting my hem all muddy.” 

- the white sail's shaking

His voice sank into murmurs, faint and soothing and themselves rather broken; Tabby curled up on his boots and started to purr, and the pot gurgled plaintively in the hearth. 

 - the white sail's shaking

Dear Father,

Yo ho ho!  (But no rum: Aunt K. wouldn't approve.)  I write to you from the Admiral Benbow Inn, where Gossamer and I have stopped to listen to a yarn or three from the old sea dogs who sailed the Spanish Main in days very much gone by.

That is to say, a parcel of books arrived for me today.

- sunshine & gossamer

A Plethora of Edits

pinterest: the white sail's shaking

While I'm not officially participating in Katie's Actually Finishing Something July, the general idea for this month is to complete the preliminary edits for The White Sail's Shaking.  This means that over the past few days I have been wielding a red pen with reasonable vigor, slashing at the beginning of the first draft (beginnings are my bane), and it is currently in possession of half my mind. 

At least one Scribbles reader was interested in knowing how I go about all of this, and in the hopes that some of these points will benefit other writers, I thought I would go ahead and outline my process.  Of course every writer edits differently, and if there is one right way to do it, no one ever informed me; but this is a broad sketch of how I generally edit.

I like to start by making lists.  I have a little notebook in which I scrawl some of the finer parts of writing: marketing ideas, blog post ideas, research snippets, inspiring songs, and edits.  This is particularly helpful for a story like White Sail's, where I have so many edits to make that it becomes overwhelming; writing them down helps me stay organized and clear-sighted about what I'm doing.  So I make a list that looks like this:

Marta's Chapters

(with indented lines for each one of said chapters)

Atlantic Crossing

Edit Out Subplot

And so on, with boxes beside each so that when I finish I can check it off.  I'm pretty general here, since I know what I'm referring to and it helps keep matters in plain terms.  Too much detail makes me panic all over again.

After I make my list, I pull up the full Word document of my novel and take care of the major points that need to be taken out - for instance, that "edit out subplot" was a major point that took up two or three chapters, plus various references later on.  I left the later references because they are tied in with their surroundings, but I went ahead and stripped out the chapters singly devoted to the subplot.  This cuts down on some of the story's bulk, makes me feel productive, and saves the ink cartridge for the next part.

Because after I take care of those major issues, I print out my whole manuscript, punch holes, and put it in a binder.  This is the exhilarating part where I feel overjoyed with myself: I finished my novel!  It's gorgeous!  I love it!  I rule the world!  I indulge myself through this period, because frankly, it isn't going to last to the end of the editing process.

This is where I find a red pen (a good one is a must, especially when you know your story is going to need it), curl up in a comfy chair, and buckle down to the minutiae of editing.  I eliminate sentences, rewrite paragraphs, slash complete sections that have no bearing on the story.  Sometimes, however, I'm not sure if a section is important or not, so I put a question mark beside it and set it aside (figuratively) for me to address when I start putting the edits into the computer.  I'll also write notes to myself in the margins, for future consideration.  After this, I haul the notebook to the computer, open the document again, and start revising.  I don't necessarily follow what I wrote in the notebook, but often I do.

Now, a major part of editing White Sail's has been and is going to be adding sections that I skipped in the first draft.  Because I had such a hard time with 2010 NaNo, trying to make my story cooperate and bully my characters into submission, I passed over chapters that I knew would kill me.  These included just about all of the chapters wholly from Marta's perspective, and now that the story is "finished" and I have a better handle on her personality, I'm having to go back and add in those parts.  I also jumped straight from Newport, RI, to Gibraltar with Tip and his companions, because at the time I had no idea what to do with the Atlantic crossing.  I have ideas now, so again, more adding.  This business could come toward the beginning of the process, where I ripped out subplots; the only reason it didn't is because I wasn't ready to do it then.  I intend to do this as or after I transcribe the smaller edits.

And there you have it - how I edit.  (I try to keep things fairly simple, because it keeps me sane.)  What about you?  Do you have a process you follow?