Editting

The second time I participated in Nano, I finished a story for quite possibly the first time in my life. I was extremely excited about it - I had always loved to write, but I'd always ran out of steam before the end of the story. Sure, there were a few small pieces that finished in twenty to thirty pages, but those were always smaller than I wanted, and intended to be parts of something bigger, which of course was never finished. So when I finished From the Sleeping Valley, I couldn't have been happier. Especially because I knew that I would be getting free proof copies as part of the deal of winning Nano.

My original plan was to get my five free copies one at a time, and use each one to continuously refine the story, editing as I went. As it turned out you had to get all five at once, so that plan went out the window, but I still designated one of them as being my editing copy, labeling the inside cover as such. Of course, in my infinite wisdom, I managed to misspell "Editing" as "Editting" which was very much not intentional and wasn't pointed out to me until much later, at which I laughed because it only seemed appropriate.

I have never been very good at editing, which is something I have written about before. It's not quite something that clicks in my brain, and worse yet, I find it painfully dull. I have been trying, ever so slowly, to edit my novel from Nano 2015, and while I like my story and recognize that it desperately needs editing, it's just so painfully difficult to get myself to actually do it. Not to mention I hardly know what to do. I understand fixing typos and correcting grammar and things like that, but taking a sentence that sounds awkward and making it sound better? Or even taking a sentence that sounds alright and making it sound great? That just doesn't really work with my brain. I still try, but I'm not entirely convinced that I'm not making things worse in my attempts to do so.

And I'm still doing the first sweep. By the time I finish, I will have forgotten ever single edit I have made. And I may very well go through a second sweep and unintentionally put things back to the way they were in the first place - that is not something I would put past myself. I'm not exactly sure how to get any better at it, either, other than to keep doing it.

But it's so boring.