Hello, writers.
November has come to a crashing halt and… how did the
NaNoWriMo crew do? Anyone hit their 50 kilowords (to use jabney’s term)? Here were the word counts reported as of our last encounter November 17th:
boofdah
Cassandra Waites 36,000
Debby
Deejay Lyn 25,082
ferg 21,655
jabney 27,778
Kimball Cross
le sequoit, 8400
Pompatus
Setsuna Mudo 4,573 (goal is 15k)
WiseFerret 11,627
It looked like several people were well on their way to making it.
And if you didn’t make it… well, at least you got something, right? And you learned about your process, which is a thing that we continually have to re-learn and no one can teach us. (It might be that your process doesn’t allow writing 50k words in a month. Now you know.)
Now for the revisions.
Please don’t send your newly finished NaNoWriMo manuscript off to an agent or editor! Congratulations on finishing it, but… now the fun starts. Now you revise, and revise, and revise.
For revisions, we generally need another set of eyeballs, attached to a brain that is not the brain in which the story was formed. That means those eyeballs have to belong to somebody else.
We need this because the spell we are under when we write our stuff—the trance that we write in—is pretty personal and isolating. We come up with characters that seem very real to us, a story that seems engaging, jokes that are absolutely hilarious—but we’re unable to separate the typed page from our own brains. The characters might be flat on the page, the story might be illogical, the jokes might make people go “huh?” instead of “ha!”
So, if you haven’t yet found those eyeballs, I encourage you to go find ‘em. A critique group—an online one if you haven’t got one locally—a writer’s workshop, a critique partner. (Some people have hooked up with critique partners right here on Write On!, in the comments.)
Most experienced readers, even if they’re not writers, can read your manuscript and tell you whether or not a story works for them. Some can even tell you why it works or doesn’t work. But either way, if they say it doesn’t work, then it’s quite possible, in some way, it doesn’t. If more than one reader tells you it doesn’t work, then it definitely doesn’t. It’s not just that they don’t appreciate your genius (though of course it’s partly that). It’s also that you haven’t quite succeeded in getting your genius onto the page.
After getting a critique, some unpublished writers go out and hire a freelance editor. I’ve never done that myself, and don’t recommend it, but if it’s something you’re considering, here are some thoughts:
• Look for someone with experience as an in-house editor at a real publisher.
• Think twice before hiring an author as a freelance editor (unless they’ve got in-house editing experience.) Author doesn’t equal editor. (Neither does English teacher—again, unless there’s some serious editing experience there.)
• Go into the experience intending to learn from it. Ultimately you want to be able to edit your own work, not hire a freelance editor every time.
• If an agent or publisher you submit your manuscript to ups and recommends a freelance editor, unbidden, then something funny is going on. Not funny ha-ha.
• Find out what the editor is actually going to do with your manuscript. You don’t want line-editing at this stage—you want a more overall approach. And how many pass-throughs are you paying for—will she look at the manuscript a second time for the same price?
Like I said, though, I have no experience with hiring freelance editors (though I’ve had some terrific in-house editors—they are some of the best writing teachers around). Has anyone had experience with this?
Now for a totally unrelated…
…tonight’s challenge.
You may recognize this scene from two weeks ago:
A Callow Youth and his/her Stout Companion are cornered at the edge of a cliff. By, I don’t know, soldiers, dragons, Seven Solicitresses. The point is someone’s on to them, and there they are, our hero/ine/s, with their backs to the wall, only there’s no wall. And precious little floor.
The CY and the SC are outnumbered, outgunned, outsworded and out-onioned. And they can’t fly.
Tonight’s challenge is to write the scene above—as a dialogue, or a description—and put it in an unexpected setting. I mean as completely different as you can think of. Your characters should still be cornered, however. By something. There need not be a cliff.
Try to limit yourself to 100 words.
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