2 Year Anniversary of Procrastination

Spoiler Alert: This series of blog posts will contain spoilers for the upcoming serial. If you don’t want to spoil yourself, then don’t read them! 

November 24, 2017. This is the date that I completed the first draft for my second book in the Leslie Kim Serial. I’ve been sitting on this draft for almost two years. I have written in that time and I have edited that draft numerous times. However, I’ve never completed a full rewrite of the entire manuscript. It’s not because its length is overwhelming, these are short books. It’s because my life has been busy, and I stopped making it a priority. My life is not any less busy right now, but I think I need this. I need to finish something. My inner creator has been yelling at me and I’m done telling her, “ask me later.”

I’m not going to make myself any promises and I might not even set a deadline. But I do want to finish this rewrite. I want to move on from it because I haven’t allowed myself to work on anything else since. I wanted to finish this project before starting a new one and that has meant that I haven’t progressed in my writing at all. I could just walk away from it and start one of my new ideas. Or I could allow myself the satisfaction of finishing what I started almost two years ago.

I’m starting with chapter one. I printed it off and it is 10 pages, double spaced. Remember, these are short books. I’m going to try and go about editing in a little bit of a different way than I’ve tried with this book before.

Previously, I have done some developmental editing using SWOT charts and I have done some line-by-line editing of dialogue. I have cut out and rewritten many of these chapters. I have restructured this book twice. I have also rewritten the last half of the book more than once. I even sent the current draft off to 12 beta readers and didn’t receive any feedback of major issues with plot, dialogue, world building, or even character building. So, I’ve basically come in and hacked it up quite a few times. For this round of edits, I really want to start at the very basic, bottom level of the book. I want to build up each chapter and polish the final product. I want this to be the last time I edit this book before I send it to a professional editor for another look at things.

Leslie Kim #101 and #102 are written with a three-act structure. They follow a pretty basic outline. I have taken each outline bullet point and written it on a notecard. The cards for Leslie Kim #101 are taped to my office wall for reference. The others are loose so I can physically rearrange them. The notecards are even color coordinated per book.

So, I know which plot points need to be addressed in these 10 pages. I have a magnetic whiteboard that I’ve chosen to hang my note cards on. As I reach each plot point in my first read through, I can place a little check next to the note card or leave myself a note to say that I need to add details or make a major rewrite.

I’m also going to use the whiteboard space to make note of the location and any location changes within the chapter and keep a tally of the characters that are present.

According to this article on Now Novel, a chapter serves two purposes:

“1. They give the reader space to pause and digest the plot developments and complications of the preceding chapter or scene.

2. They signal transition: A change in story location, a character embarking on a new goal, or the closing of one-story arc and the start of another.”

This is my first chapter, so my main character should be embarking on a new goal. I want that goal to be clear to the reader. I also want to provide space within the chapter to briefly recap some of the events in the previous book, as they are relevant to this new book.

Location: IDID Office

Characters: Gunny, Leslie

Here are a few issues I’m going to address in chapter 1:

• Leslie rolls his eyes. How often does a middle-aged man actually roll his eyes in a social interaction. I’m going to change this.
• He also makes a reference to grinding his gears, which is a meme reference to Family Guy, and I’m going to find a different way to phrase this.
• Note: he does refer to Elena as his girlfriend in this chapter. This will be new information for readers of the previous book.
• The objective of the book is introduced, which is to solve the disappearances from the testing lab.
• I also decided to cut out a few references to the Kapatonian measurement system. For one, I’m not actually qualified to create a measurement system and I think it will be faulty enough that anyone that is qualified would be
• The other changes came down to phrasing and grammar.

Note: 9/22: I have begun editing chapter 1.

Update: 9/25 I’m done editing the first chapter! Hooray! After a year and 10 months of procrastination, it has taken me just three days to finish editing it. I did the edits on paper and then made the changes to Scrivener.