Weekly Writing Intentions: First Rewrite

Daily Diary, June 11, 2022, Day 650:

For those of you interested in my writing process, I would say I am now on to stage 3, if you count doing research as stage 1 and writing the complete first draft as stage 2. State 3 is where I read through the completed draft and do my first major rewriting. At this stage, what I am doing is mostly what is called developmental editing.  Looking at what is working, and what isn’t working, especially in terms of pacing. Also looking at character development. Has there been too much or too little backstory, enough change in main characters in the course of the story?

A lot of the time this rewriting involves snipping––words, paragraphs, and even whole sections. I tend to over-write, so extraneous words slip in, long complex sentences need to be pruned, and it is easy to have redundancies (often having a person express a feeling or talk about a clue multiple times.) Sometimes this is ok-for example, if there is a reason to build on the original idea.  Most the time these redundancies need to go because they slow down the pacing. Every once in awhile, a whole thread needs to get cut. I got carried away in the last chapter introducing a new character (one of Mrs. Stein’s daughters) because I think I may want to use her in another story. But was totally unnecessary to this plot—700 words went away in one snip.

Other times, this process requires adding. Say a theme or a clue comes up later in the story, and it needs some more foreshadowing. But mostly I am happy if at the end of each day I either have lost word count, or come out even!

So, what are my intentions for this week? I have 16 chapters, and if I take the rest of today off, 6 days to do this work (with usual other responsibilities.)  So, I should try to get at least two and a half chapters done a day (preferably 3 to make up for those days that fill up with other things.) That would give my husband next weekend to read and me to make suggested changes. (He is my first reader.) And that would be the end of Stage 3. This, of course, is a self-imposed deadline. But with my daughter and grandsons coming at the end of the month, there is also pressure to get this stage done so I can concentrate on getting ready for their visit.

I will let you know how it’s going as the week progresses.

Meanwhile, while I have spent the morning doing the weekly deep clean (just scrubbed out some black mold from the rim of a bathroom sink—ugh!), but I hope to just read for the rest of the day. In short, going to take a brief break to “smell the roses.”