I had to accept I was doing something wrong with my editing in the last two weeks. That was pretty tough to do.
When editing this current draft for Gloradel, I currently have it broken up into the following parts:
Read the chapter, identify open items, and identify purpose of chapter and scenes,
Rewrite, add voice, and address open items,
Pronoun consistency check, Sentence & Paragraph Starter Check,
Dialogue Read Aloud,
Invisible Word Review, and then a
Full Chapter Read Aloud x 2.
And while I think I've finally got my Draft 3 process down into a potentially tenable procedure, I had to take a hard look at how I was doing the invisible word review and scale it back. Way way back.
In the end, I'm proud of myself for shifting my focus towards a more tenable action, just like I'm aiming to finishing my commitments in order to open up more room for editing, but it still stings to have a fresh idea, try it out, and then ultimately realize that it didn't work they way I thought it would.
But at the same time, sometimes that's the only way we can learn. And the time I'm investing into this will continue to help me develop my craft and my tools as a storyteller. So just like I had to start with writing only 250 words in a single setting, I have to accept that as I learn to edit, there will be things I need to do wrong in order to learn to do it right.
Aside from that, I just finished watching every episode of the Writing Excuses Podcast. Honestly, I don't think it's hit me yet that I've watched every single episode that's ever aired, but it was a fun ride that I learned a lot from! While it took several years to go through their whole backlog, I'd say that it's a great podcast for any young writer (like myself lol) and if you start with Season 1, it's interesting to follow a lot of these authors (Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Taylor, and more!) talk about their writing careers and craft in the early stages of their journeys.
With that done, I'll be in need of a new writing podcast (I'm thinking the Grammar Girl podcast might be good), but I'm also going to convert that time to help with my reading of all the writing books that are in my backlog. There's a whole bunch of those, so if I play my cards right maybe it'll be a couple years long journey just like writing excuses was!
Anyways, that's all I got for today and I hope you all have a great rest of your day!
Sincerely,
Josh Acocella
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