Editing is taking way longer then I wanted it to. I think I only got through maybe 4500 words yesterday. I think, I may be over editing things to the point of completely rewriting every sentence. I have to be careful not to to that. Some sections I’ve written are definitely in need of more edit work then others, but I shouldn’t be going overboard, and just rewriting every sentence I come across as a rule. The idea, is to smooth out the words, and get the ideas across succinctly, without beating the reader over the head with it. You don’t need to rewrite every single sentence. I would hope. I have definitely noticed, that my sections of narrative are the ones in the most need of rewriting. My dialogue seems to be more presentable in the first draft. Maybe, that’s another good reason, to write more dialogue, and less narrative as you go. It was one of the comments in the CritiqueCircle comments that several people repeated, and one that I would agree with. If your dialogue is more presentable on a first draft, then perhaps yo should write more of it. Not to mention, that you’ll have more opportunities to do character development, if your characters are talking more. That would make the story more interesting for the reader. And, when it comes to editing, things should go much quicker. It’s probably partially due to the fact, that I don’t have as many run on sentences in my dialogue as I do in my narrative. That’s another thing, I need to go back and address in the first chapter or so. When I first started editing, I went a little overboard on the long sentence, and basically shorten the crap out of every line. Right now, when I go back and read the first chapter, it seems really choppy. I need to lengthen some sentences, and maybe join a few sentences together. Just to get the rhythm and flow working a little better. Right now, it seems to short and staccato. Just another thing to keep in mind when editing. I had hoped to have the full draft edited by the end of today, but as of this morning I still have about 25K left to edit. So much for my 20K editing per day. Not sure where I got that number from today. It must have been from some of my earlier editing sessions, when I wasn’t quite looking for as much stuff. I think, I was just making sure that everything was spelled right and the sentences made sense. I wasn’t looking for over explanation and overly wordy sentences. Those are the two main things on my hit list at the moment. If I get those two tendencies out of my way, when I go back to first draft writing, then I can probably get my first editing pass down to 20K per day. Or, my 5K within an hour or two. Right now, there’s just so much that needs correcting, it’s bogging me down ridiculously. I do, need to get through this first section though. I so close, and when I do, then I can address where I go with the rest of the novel. I need enough words to get it back up to over 400 pages. And, I need to know I have a process in place, where I can crank out a 250 or so word novel every month. The next process that I haven’t really done yet in great detail, is the outlining. Hopefully that won’t take too long, but I have a feeling it will be longer than I had hoped given that it’s my first time doing a detailed outline. Just, take the seven point structure, and lay out your scenes. Make sure they have some conflict and emotional response as laid out in the scene/sequel cycle. If I can successfully those techniques for the outlining process, I will have a much more interesting novel going forward. Part of me thinks, that maybe if I hold back on publishing the first two novels, until the outline is done for the third, perhaps I can even do some minor rewriting on the first two to make them better. Not so sure about that, but it’s something to think about. I would like to have all three novels out there published as close together as possible. That would give me a good angle from a marketing perspective. I don’t want to put things off for too long though.

TIGERBLOOD: yep DAILYMOOD: anxious LOCATION: home office WORDSWRITTEN: editing PUSHUPS: 4:00 wall sit TODO: editing TV: supernatural BOOK: none GAME: none EXERCISE: none WEIGHT: 170 BREAKFAST: bacon & eggs LUNCH: big ass salad DINNER: tuscan chicken salad (east side marios) SNACKS: orange, grapes, 2 lara bars ALCOHOL: none BEDTIME: 11:00 AWAKE: 6:00