Reaching a Milestone in Writing
Silverbrook, edit pass 1 done
I’ll start by saying that I’ve written a lot of first drafts of novels over the years. Probably more than I can count. Certainly more than I can find in my less than adequate filing system. I’ll come across hand-written notes of a story I wrote so long ago that it may as well have been written by another person. Some of the stuff even seems a little bit good.
I may be able to pat myself on the back for finishing a first draft, but I fall down big time when it comes to taking that monstrosity to the next stage. It’s so much more fun to start something than to finish it. Writing, it turns out, is a mess of hard work. Particularly as it comes to editing.
Last year, I decided, damn it, I’m going to finish something. So I took the last novel draft that I’d completed and commenced to editing. Even signed up for a class on editing to help motivate me to complete the project. Well, it took about a year, but I did complete one complete edit pass of my novel which, for lack of a proper title, I call Silverbrook.
Now, let me say first that I am quite proud of myself for accomplishing this milestone. It was huge, and I learned a lot. Some of the things I’ve learned are the following:
- I hate editing. Over the course of the year, I have certainly gotten better at it, but…
