Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Plans

I like to use dates as milestones and yardsticks. And as it's coming up to my birthday and the New Year I've been thinking about what's next.

Work wise I'd like to keep earning until the end of January, so that I've saved up enough to write for a few months and enjoy my trip to Las Vegas.

Writing wise, I'm hoping to jump right into editing. I've now printed out everything and I'll probably be editing by hand directly on the hard copies. Ideas are brewing about an on-the-fly coding system that will allow me to identify the edit type later - grammar, repetition, bad flow, etc.

Once I've marked up the entire novel I'll start rewriting it by using versions in Word - so I can still keep the first draft but print out a comparison between versions in case I've been too hasty or changed my mind. And it should hopefully show me a clear progression of my writing! I wish I could pinpoint how long the rewrite will take but I honestly don't know. Again I'd like aim for 1500-2000 words a day but this might not be possible if I'm being choosier.

Then once it is finished I'll send it out to a few friends and an editor that was recommended to me (I'll go into further details at the time) and perhaps join a writers' group for feedback.

2 comments:

Alix said...

Sounds like a lot of hard work ahead but I am sure it will be worth it. Good luck with it all.

nietzschean-ghost said...

Hellojed,

I have a similar idea for my blog over at http://nietzschen-ghost.blogspot.com/

You said you were writing short stories? Have you had anything published yet? It sounds like you are really committed to the book your writing and I hope it goes well for you.