It’s been a while since my last post. I guess time flies when you’re having fun. Or in my case – time flies when you’re having a root canal retreatment. My day job, a running injury, the aforementioned root canal and a whole load of editing of Leah may have curtailed my blogging but the writing streak continues. Although my daily word count numbers have dropped significantly because I’ve been revising and editing, I’m currently at 533 days with no plans to stop. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve made the last few revisions to Leah, wrapped up the first draft of Reg vs the Martians and started a couple of new chapters that will replace a chapter in Glitch that I’ve never been happy with. I’m not convinced this new stuff is much of an improvement but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. I’ll probably rewrite it again next year. I also outlined the sequel to The Zombie Book (working title). I’m heading off to England next week and I had originally planned to spend some time on the final revisions of Glitch. But I’ve come to the conclusion that editing on the road doesn’t really work … Read More
Metrics Monday – 10th November 2014
Deep into revisions this week which means a lower word count – 4,051 words. That sounds pretty good but I spent over 14 hours writing to get that. The beginning of the week was spent getting Leah ready for a second trip to an editor. The first round of editing was a high level, development, edit focusing on big picture issues. This week was spent addressing those and making a few last minute tweaks. The second edit is a copy edit and is focused on grammar, spulling, etc. Once I’ve gone through that feedback and made the appropriate changes there’ll be a couple of rounds of proofreading and then the story will be ready for release. More on that next week – including the reveal of the final title of the story. With Leah out of the way I made a last ditch attempt at avoiding working on the Glitch Mitchell and the Unseen Planet edits by starting a sequel to Leah (Friday) and doing some more work on Reg vs the Martians (Saturday), a story I started at Mary Robinette Kowal’s short story workshop. Saturday’s writing didn’t go that well (mostly because I was hungry and couldn’t get to the kitchen to graze) so on Sunday, I finally gave in and pulled … Read More
I admit it. I don’t like editing.
I finally started going through my editor’s changes to Glitch Mitchell and the Unseen Planet today. Basically, I couldn’t think of an excuse not to. Leah (working title) has gone to its editor, the Glitch cover is progressing nicely (and looking really good) and I’m waiting for editor feedback on the first fifty pages of The Zombie Book. Yesterday, I delayed things by working on the short story I started at Mary Robinette Kowal’s short story workshop – Reg vs The Martians but it didn’t go that well and I need to mull over the plot a bit more. That really only left Glitch. I got through two chapters, about 7,238 words out of 60,823 before I gave up. It turns out I really don’t like going through edits. I had to resort to Bob the Bahamas cat to get myself going again. It’s a holiday here in Canada on Tuesday so I’m taking Monday off and one of my tasks will be to get through at least three more chapters. We’ll see how that goes. [“I admit it. I don’t like editing.” by Philip Harris first appeared on Solitary Mindset on 9th November 2014]