How to Buckle down to Edit?

At the beginning of August, I opened TROLL with the intentions of editing and publishing it by October 1.

I read the first ten pages and closed the manuscript. What a mess! I proceeded to go on vacation. Disney World and Universal Florida were more fun than thinking about TROLL.

After vacation at the end of August, I opened the manuscript, read the first ten pages, went 'uh-oh' and closed the manuscript before I sent an SOS out to a writer friend: 

Please read and tell me what's wrong.

Sept 7: I opened the manuscript and FREAKED when I read the first ten pages.  Something was very, very wrong. I phoned my friend. She was gone . . . of course.

*sheesh* Who does she think she is? What do you mean I'm not the center of her universe?  Aren't MY needs more important than hers?? Some people . . .

The next day she emailed me, asking what's up.

My response:

. . . I need your help, and you shoot straight from the hip (like me), no sugar coating for you. You helped so much with GNOME by simply pointing out that the story didn’t start until 10K into it, resulting in my cutting those words and reworking them.

Anyhoo, I started going over TROLL—AND IT’S WRONG, VERY, VERY WRONG!

The beginning totally sucks. And something is missing. I don’t know what it could be other than the voice and I’m simply ‘telling’ stuff. I need to get to the real beginning of the story, but I’m mired in how to ‘fix’ things. I’m debating on scraping the whole damn story right now, since I can’t read far enough into it to know if there is any redeeming qualities about it.

I need your help, Obi Wan Meg. You’re my only hope!

PS: I’ve already mentally scraped my Oct 1 deadline to publish it. I’d still like to get it up this year, but I want it to be of the quality of the other ones.

Okay, now, my friend actually HAS a life, unlike me, so it's been a few days before she can get around to reading my story. During this time, I'm thinking about the beginning of my story while I'm walking.

--This is the biggest reason why I don't walk with a buddy--all they do is talk, talk, talk. Mindless jibber-jabber about 'stuff' when I need to be thinking about my characters.

Again, *sheesh*!

So on Sept. 12, I have ants in my pants about this story and send her an email:

Okay, tell me the truth.

I can handle it. Even if you haven’t read the damn thing yet, tell me what I expect to hear.

The rhythm of the story is off. The pacing sucks. Kyte’s voice is off. It needs serious slicing and dicing and condensing.

I think that’s it.

Sept. 13, here's a partial response from my friend:

Mags--

The pacing in the first few pages is off. While I like the sword play, it goes on a bit long. Where the blue stars are, that got my attention. You are so good about layering what you need.

You do have to put what happened to Mike as well as Rhan's back story.

What is the one thing that would motivate both an adult and a kid? Threaten family, and if she cares for Mike or her mother, that is powerful motivation.

Okay. So what do I do?

I proceed to write 2282 words on ANOTHER story.  Yeah . . .talk about my avoidance issues.

So how does this whining episode help me edit TROLL?

This is my process.  Yeah, it's lame, but sorry, it is what it is.

--I go through the 'don't look at it and it will disappear' stage, then the freaking out stage, then the whole story stinks phase,then the 'okay, I know I have  story issues but how do I start' phase. This is where my brain juices kick in and I start thinking about what I can do to make it better.

I'm not quite ready to jump in with edits, but I'm almost there.

Today, along with writing 2282 words on a new story, I wrote down the chapter titles of TROLL. The chapter numbers are off. Some of the chapter lengths are off (too long or too short). Some chapter don't even have titles.

So how does this help me?

1) I tend to get bogged down in the minutia. Tweaking isn't going to work for this story. This calls for dumping the first few chapters and rewriting them. Big stuff.

2) It familiarized me with the story line again.

3) I also glanced at the writing at the beginning of each chapter. It isn't too bad. Kyte's voice and style are there--just not in the first few chapters.

The story isn't a lost cause. Oh, I'll probably cut most of the first two or three chapters and rework the beginning.

This is what a writer does. We rewrite. We rewrite to make the story the best it can possibly be. We rewrite because we do not want to disappoint our readers.

It's just that some of our processes are a little whinier than others. Okay, I think mine is pretty whiny.

But I must stop blogging, because I have a story to rewrite!

Later, Peeps