The Revision Diaries (5)

sometime late last night, i tweeted something that looked a little like this:

I fixed it I fixed it IFIXEDIT!!!

except it wasn't bold or in massive type, because - dang it - twitter doesn't allow us to express ourselves through font!
but big and bold is how i felt after getting past a major hurdle in my line edits.

and really, "line edits" is a bit deceptive here.
often, at the line edit stage, and editor will have a few additional suggestions for revision. one such suggestion, for me, required a lot of pacing around the house and muttering to myself. i avoided the scene for a couple days - if you can call obsessing about it, emailing about it and jotting down notes on it avoiding. what i mean is, i didn't touch the scene in my manuscript. i worked on everything else - the actual line edits, the moments that needed rewording and other minor fixes that were easier to tackle. but i was afraid to mess with this one scene for fear of screwing it up.

over the weekend, i finally ran out of other edits, and i knew i had to face my fear. today, i want to share with you how i faced it and what i learned from it.

face the fear:
- my paralysis came mostly from the fear that the manuscript is pretty well polished, and this edit would require me to tear apart some of those polished pages. to help curb that fear, i took the chapter that would be mostly changed and copied it into a new word document. this way, i could mess it up all i wanted, and the original chapter would remain untouched in my ms. - a small, obvious, solution probably... but it really helped me relax.
- in fact, i liked working in this new document so much, i made THREE of them. and i started to write 3 different scenes - each with a different approach to the "FIX." one scene fell apart so fast and furious, i deleted the whole document. it wasn't even worth archiving under "experiments." the other two scenes worked a little better, and i treated them both like rough drafts - i gave myself freedom to make mistakes ranging from typos to total character revisions.
- then i did what i would do with any rough draft. i sent the scenes to one of my crit partners. with her notes, i was able to see which scene was working. i rewrote that scene, revised it again, then took the now-polished chapter and plugged it back into the manuscript.

lesson #1 - the domino effect:
- as polished as that chapter was, i had created changes that required me to now go through the rest of my clean ms and start mucking things up again - the one thing i wanted to avoid!
but now that i knew i had "fixed it," the other changes weren't so scary. i went backward from the scene to plant some clues of the scene to come, and i went forward in the manuscript to create a few moments that would be altered by the new scene.
- the lesson for me was - no matter how much i tried to isolate the issue, to make it this one small fix in this one small corner of the story - the fact is, any important change will have a domino effect throughout your story, even if the change is small and at the almost-polished stage of your revisions. if the change doesn't ripple through the entire manuscript, it probably wasn't that important to begin with.

lesson #2 - don't be afraid to TRY:
- i agreed with my editor that we needed this "fix," but i wasn't sure if her suggestion for fixing it was the right way. i got it all stuck in my head that i could fix it another way - a way that i had already tried and that wasn't working but that i was sure would have a different result if i kept doing it. hello, definition of insanity!
- the scene i wrote first was my own solution. i wasn't happy with it, but i couldn't figure out how to fix it. so i told myself, just TRY to do what your editor suggested.
well. yeah. my editor - she's a pretty smart cookie.
i liked the second scene so much better. i knew this before i even sent the scenes to my crit partner, but i wanted an outside opinion. ...and that opinion was a clear smack down on scene one and hearts for scene 2. lesson learned: even if an idea doesn't sound like the right solution, just try it out. you may surprise yourself.

so i tweeted to the world that IFIXEDIT! and now i can start my final pass through the manuscript, making sure everything is still polished. of course, it's always possible my editor will say:

Yo. You SO did NOT fix it.

(well, no, that's not actually possible, because my editor is much more eloquent than that - but you get the idea.)
if that happens, you'll know, because i'll be back here with another round of the revision diaries.

but for now:
Line Edits. Conquered.

so much social media

this post is a call for opinions!

i've seen a lot of chatter lately about the eventual demise of facebook and the apparent slow-down in blogging and blog commenting. i've also noticed some of that chatter includes guesses about what will be the next "big thing."

it's not really a secret that i am a reluctant participant in social media.
it all started for me a few years ago, when i got a call from my good friend Julia telling me to get on MySpace. i had heard of it, but i wasn't interested.
No, she insisted. You don't have to make a page. You can just sign up and SPY ON PEOPLE!
well hello! that sounded like fun!

and it was. MySpace was the beginning of social spying - looking up people you hadn't seen in forever. online voyeurism wasn't new, but keeping tabs on people you actually knew? - that was still a pretty fresh idea.
of course, the spying got old fast, and i ended up making a page.
that was my gateway to social media.

these days, i am far from a social media expert, but sure, i play.
and now, as an author looking to connect with readers and other writers, i'm conscious of what is the hot spot of the moment. so i'm looking for opinions.
where are you all gathering online these days?

i'm here:
blog
twitter
personal facebook (mostly private and non-writing-related stuff)

should i also be here?:
tumblr
google+
formspring
linked in (i quit this, losing all of my links in the process. maybe that was a bad idea?)
professional facebook (separate author page - something more public?)

if you could only pick 3 social media to participate in, which 3 would you choose and why?
in your opinion - What's Next?

word count wednesday 1

happy first week of NaNoWriMo!

at least, i hope your week is happy. mine is fairly miserable, as i've started NaNo with a nasty cold. all of my words are alternately fueled by fever and cold meds. although, being home sick has its upside - like plenty of time to write. that's why my word count is already....

5,568 words!

i know some folks out there have already blown that word count out of the water, but that's pretty great for me - especially considering all of those words are from Monday. (yesterday's elections required me to work 13 hours). but i'm back on the couch with my tissues and my laptop today, so hopefully i can bang out another few thousand words and stay ahead of the game.

observations from week one:

- for me, writing fast = writing sloppy.
(lots of little typos and missing or misspelled words)

- i must break the "don't look back" rule.
i just can't confidently move forward on a book unless i look back at yesterday's chapters and at least do a cursory edit.

- my outline is a jail cell.
it's a lot easier to write fast and furious if i'm not bound by my outline. when i hit a scene i don't feel inspired to write or don't know how to transition into, i slow down. i may be in danger of veering off the outline just to keep pushing forward.

it remains to be seen whether NaNo will work for BILLY D. the way it worked for BUTTER, and i may end up having to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. (yikes! i hope not!) but i just don't know if NaNo is right for every book... just as it's not right for every writer.
Phoebe North wrote this great post on her blog: "NaNo No More." (link! click it!) she makes some good points about NaNo and why it might not help you accomplish what you really want to accomplish. (and she writes from experience, having done NaNo several times, both "winning" and "losing.")

if you're still committed to making NaNo work for you, check out the NaNo word sprints on twitter. (link! click it and follow!)

don't forget to share your word count in the comments, and tell me your own week one observations!

ahem...

...i have a small announcement to make.

I AM GOING TO BE AN AUTHOR WHEN I GROW UP!!!

because my book is getting published!

i am so excited to share this news: i am officially a Bloomsbury girl!

here is my fancy announcement from PM:

(click to make larger and less blurry)

"Erin Lange's debut BUTTER, about a lonely 423-pound boy who decides to eat himself to death live on the Internet, and the bullies who become macabre cheerleaders for his plan, to Caroline Abbey at Bloomsbury, by Jennifer Laughran at Andrea Brown Literary Agency (NA)."

this is so completely unreal that i don't know where to begin.

i know a longer post will be in order soon, but if i tried today it would just be gibberish, and i might get tears all over my laptop.

so for now, i just want to say:

my agent rocks. my editor rocks. bloomsbury rocks.

and all of you writers and readers are pretty freaking amazing too. i'm so blown away to be part of the publishing community.

and now i finally have to suck it up and join twitter, like... today.

UPDATE: here is my agent's post about the deal. (link! click it!) it gives a summary of our "path to publication" and a hint of how crazy our submission process was!

the trouble with twitter

i am always one step behind when it comes to social media.

i was late to the MySpace party – like, so late that by the time i got there everyone had already switched to Facebook.

i resisted FB because, geez, i had just found my way around myspace and posted all these pictures and found a cool background and made friends and OMG WHY IS EVERYONE LEAVING ME??
i finally made the switch in protest. i hated FB at first, with its non-user-friendly interface and its no-frills design, but that’s where the party was, so i went. eventually, i warmed up to its merits. hey! i haven’t seen that guy since high school! whoa! my BFF from 10 years ago! my aunt! my cousins! Facebook is the best!!

i’m less gung-ho now, but i still use it to share photos with folks who are far away and to keep up with people i otherwise would lose touch with. mostly, i use it much like folks use Twitter – to say something really quick on the move or to post a quick link or pic.

so why am i so resistant to the ACTUAL Twitter site?
well, for starters, the first and only time i ever tried Twitter was a disaster. how am i supposed to find people i know with all these crazy handles? who are these people following me when my account is 5 seconds old? and OMFG HOW DO I MAKE MY CELL PHONE STOP TWEETING ME EVERY 16 SECONDS??!

account delete.

that experience put me off Twitter for quite awhile. in the meantime, i took up blogging.
this was a game i could play. blogging was the first online medium i fully embraced from the beginning. no pressure to post every day, let alone every 5 minutes. when i have something to say, i can actually say something, without trying to keep it to 140 characters. for the most part, i can limit my blog to writing about writing instead of feeling so pressured to say something – anything – that i end up telling everyone i’m wearing my Monday panties on Thursday or that the chorizo burrito i just ate made me spend 20 minutes in the bathroom.

seriously. these are the things i’m afraid i would tweet if tweeted. twatted?
anyway.

my fear of Twitter is partly due to something i know about myself – i’m not going to half-ass it. if i join the Twitter ranks, i will feel compelled to fully participate – to build a following, to post multiple times a day, to keep up with my fellow tweeters.
and that is a time suck.

i abandoned MySpace a long time ago, but i still maintain my blog and my Facebook (which means spending time reading the other blogs and facebook pages I’m connected to). those things, combined with keeping up with all my favorite threads and friends on the Absolute Write forums, probably suck up one or two hours of my day… almost every. single. day. i can only imagine the time i would invest in Twitter.

and that is time not spent writing, which needs to be my focus. So for now i am staying off Twitter.
now that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t tweet. quite the opposite! the more people on Twitter, the more writers and pub peeps for me to stalk follow. i check Twitter daily to see what people are talking about in #askagent and #yalitchat. i’m learning about hashtags and tiny urls. i’m observing how others successfully use Twitter to network and promote and just keep up with their buddies in general.

so when (not if, but when) i join Twitter, i will be ready to jump in with both feet. it’s just a matter of time.