Let’s kick this thing off with a bang.

Now playing: Smashing Pumpkins - Marquis In Spades

My apologies for such a long delay between posts. To be perfectly honest, I just let the time get away from me. The holidays went well – there was much fun had by all, many late night bowling sessions on the Wii, a lot of embarrassing antics with Guitar Hero, and the company of family. I hope you all had great holidays as well.

Now it’s 2008. A new year and whatnot. This means there are a lot of you out there who have all ready broken your resolutions. I’m normally don’t make resolutions. It’s like setting yourself up for failure. Well, maybe I’m doing just that, but this year I resolved to finish the second draft of my novel imagiNATION. Given my disposition with resolutions, you’d think I could’ve picked something less important at which to potentially fail, but hey, if you’re not going to dive in, what’s the point in swimming at all, right?

Enough digression. I’ve begun editing my novel imagiNATION. I’ve said that before many times over the past year, only whenever I sat down to actually do it, I conveniently found something else to occupy my time. Another story, another book to read, another movie to watch or game to play. No more. It’s time to put this thing to rest.

I started the novel at the end of 2005, and finished it in August ‘06. I told myself I’d take six months away from it, get feedback from a few (i.e. more like ten) people, and then begin the slow, arduous task of taking it apart and putting it back together. To date I’ve received feedback from maybe four of those ten people and have been sidetracked with my own projects (ALT being a major one which became a force of its own that I could not stop even if I wanted to). I realized half way through December that it’s been over two years since I started the damn book. Almost two years since I finished. It should’ve been edited, drafted, polished and sent out to six or fifty agents by now. But no, I chose a different path.

On one hand I feel like I wasted my time (which is just a knee-jerk reaction, really). On the other, I feel like it’s exactly what I needed to do, and I think that’s the hand I’ll shake. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks thinking about the novel, about what I want to change, what works, what doesn’t, where the inspiration for certain ideas came from, how to change things and make it all still work together as a whole, and it’s put me in touch with the root of the story itself. That is, the basis upon which it was created. The story is a very personal one, and that’s why I needed as much time as I did.

DSCF1380Right now I’m up to chapter three. There are thirteen chapters total. I’m around page 45 out of 410. Still a long ways to go, but I’ve got plenty of time. I’m doing about two or three pages a day and keeping notes as I go. As I kept a writing journal during the process of A Life Transparent, I am keeping an editing journal for the second draft of imagiNATION, and I have to say it’s a great idea. I’d recommend it to any other writer who’s about to undertake the same daunting task of editing a massive novel. My game plan is to red-line the manuscript first, taking noteDSCF1379s as I go along; once that’s finished, I’ll start from the beginning, retyping the entire thing into a fresh, blank document. It’ll be, in theory, like writing it for the first time, only this time with extensive footnotes that exist elsewhere besides my own brain. You can expect regular editing updates. I hope to document the entire process for my own records and for anyone who might want suggestions/insight into one possible way of doing it.

Because that’s the thing—I’ve yet to find a blog or interview or article by any author documenting this phase of the process. If I fail, I fail, but at least there will be a record so someone else can analyze the mistake and try something different. At least I’ll be able to go back and see where I stumbled and correct myself the next time around. That’s not to say there’s one definitive way of editing, either—like writing habits, I imagine everyone’s got their own list of quirks and such. At least I hope so.

So here’s to 2008, the year I finally finish imagiNATION, and move on to something else.

TK

P.S. Don’t forget signed copies of A Life Transparent are still on sale all this month. More info can be found on the sidebar to your right.

P.S.S. Erica took a break from the website over the holidays. We’ll be tweaking it, adding and removing things over the next few weeks, so if something’s missing when you show up, chances are it’ll be back once you refresh.

tags: edits   imagiNATION   resolutions  

January 11, 2008 | Filed Under Blog 

Comments

2 Responses to “Let’s kick this thing off with a bang.”

  1. Ric on January 12th, 2008 9:22 pm

    I like the speed you’re editing at, haha, because I just finished the third chapter myself. I’m moving slowly, unfortunately: school’s already throwing shit at me. So far my first comment is I don’t find myself following the events of “outside-in” with anything but confusion and only slight interest - my interest is held strongly by the main parts of the novel. I would suggest adding more description into the first encounter with the Negs, as vile little things as they are I find myself wanting more details. Same with Fuseli: he needs more physical description because at this point my mental picture draws a blank and I have no idea what it’s supposed to look like.
    Overall, I’m enjoying it so far. Is your Virgil a reference to THE Virgil?

  2. Ric on January 12th, 2008 9:24 pm

    edit: scratch that, I’m getting ahead of myself. At this point I am just STARTING chapter 3.

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