ieva melgalve » editing

imagine, editing

ieva — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 05:59:08 +0000

Last night, I don’t know why, editing finally opened up my imagination.
Just like in childhood (well… let’s admit it, just like from the childhood till today), when watching TV series or reading adventure books, I always imagined myself as one of the characters, always slightly disappointed that the world didn’t go exactly as I wanted it to go…
Right now, I’m doing the same thing with Vega, only I’m now allowed to tweak the rules if I wish. And that’s liberating and fun, and a bit distracting (I couldn’t go to sleep because I was too immersed in the basics of jewelry-magic, which, as it suddenly occured to me, should exist in Vega’s world, even if in a half-forgotten state).

Also, this state of heightened imagination is awesome. I missed it a lot during December.

January recap

ieva — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:41:35 +0000

On January I had one false start on Virgin. I got the protagonist wrong–she was one of those whiny creatures thinking that all the society had wronged her; and even though she was right, I hated her. So I stopped to regroup and figured out the right start in the last quarter in January. The 4K I have now seem to indicate that it’s more or less fine now (although I really should do some character sketches and planning!). Also, I’m doing fine with 250 word challenge. 250 words seem to be an amount I can easily write under almost any circumstances, so good for weekends too.

Editing is jumpy, some days I work like crazy, some days I’m not approaching my index cards at all. That’s something I intend to improve over February, or else the edits will take forever.

Plans for next month: I’m hoping to write (or edit to a good second draft) a short story, get Virgin to 10K and keep on editing. Since I will have a lot to do at work, no big plans yet, just not to lose whatever momentum I have now.

beginning boggle AGAIN

ieva — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:24:49 +0000

Now, cool. I’ve had a fine first scene, and today I struggled to get the second on page, but, while writing is still enjoyable, the forcing myself to write part is a horror. I suspect it’s because of two things: I’ve gotten darn lazy, and I’m still editing Vega (so for every scene write, I have those 93 scenes of Vega that will need to be redone, and thus it’s very hard to allow myself to write crap).
Also, my planning is running thin. Here’s the problem though: as I realized, I cannot conceivably plan characters before writing them, so it seems that I should write them (at least a bit) first, and make the plan right after that, before I swamp myself with loose, open-ended characters.

That, or take my Tarot cards out again. They’ve never failed me before regarding short-term setups, and they won’t do that now, I trust.

finding the balance

ieva — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:56:46 +0000

This year, I started with editing and writing. That was going pretty well until this morning when I woke up…well, I didn’t really wake up, i sorta came to consciousness and realized I can’t get out of my bed without swaying and I can’t look into light and I can’t have five minutes peace from headache. The idea that I had fever was totally wrong; my temperature was running too low. After a bit of research, I concluded it’s exhaustion. Yea, right, I’ve been actually doing something for six days and now I’m exhausted, despite the fact that I sleep, on average, 9 hours a day (long nap after work, then going to sleep and waking up late).
Well, obviously I have to tweak my plans then. Editing stays, writing gets cut down to 100 words a day. It’s not much by any means, I can do it in twenty minutes (the very fact that I need twenty minutes to get 100 words down is an indicator of low batteries), and hopefully I’ll end up not skipping work like I do today and not driving myself mad with “am I going insane” ideas.

There’s very little I’ll do if I burn myself out, is there? So, well, let’s adjust to what my body says is the right amount of work.

New Year’s Plan

ieva — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:21:39 +0000

Everybody must have some resolution, right? Well, mine isn’t really a resolution, it’s a not-too-ambitious plan of what I could accomplish without driving myself nuts (either with burn-out or lazy-crap-writer syndrome that kicks in whenever I don’t write much).

1. Edit Vega to the final, query-able version. (That’ll be the hardest, but I believe that with How To Revise Your Novel course I’ll be able to do that. And I’ll start working on that very soon, very likely tomorrow.)
2. Edit at least 12 stories to the final, submittable versions. That’s roughly one story a month, and totally doable if I apply myself to that.
3. Write a new novel (the one code-named Virgin perhaps?). I think I’ll start writing right now because basically, I don’t get the real “feel” or the scope of the novel yet. Sounds upside-down? Well, no. I reckon that the most painless and reliable way to get the “feel” of the novel is to write a chapter or two. That feel will determine whether it’s primarily an action-based stuff with weird magic or is it a psychological piece, or a cozy dealing-with-sexuality story, or a horror that would make me stay awake at nights. Or, if the first chapters feel wrong, well, then I’ll know it’s wrong and try the opposite approach. It’s not the scientific way but it’s a way to make sure I enjoy writing something I will very likely *not* enjoy writing.
(By the way: why writing if I have so much to edit? I think it’s necessary for me to write. I re-started writing because I’m hooked on that; if my editing will mess with my writing, I’ll drop them both as I actually did two weeks ago. So I’ll do both, in a sorta accomplishment-reward vicious circle.)

What I believe I’ll also do: write a handful of new stories and, most likely, participate in NaNoWriMo again (with a subsequent burn-out in December again), but I’m not putting it in my plan because I don’t want to allow myself to fail at my first two resolutions and excuse it with “oh, but I did the stories and the NaNo”.

That’s it. May you (whoever is reading this) have plans so cool that making them come true feels great and, well, not easy, but tremendously rewarding.
All else is luck and gifts from above, and I believe that these things will come to you on their own accord and in their own time, when they’re most needed.

my theme and me

ieva — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:51:32 +0000

As I was pondering on the real theme of Vega, I realized that the thing I sort of “prove” in the novel, it’s theme/morality is something that I disagree with.
That’s it.
“It is worth it to fool yourself in order to follow your dream.”
“The best you can ever do is be yourself, never more.”
“You have to live the life you were born into, nothing else.”
“If you can’t live as who you are, giving up is fine.”
Yea sure. If somebody said something like this to me, I’d respond rather violently. Or with a condescending sneer if he said something like that about himself.
But that’s the idea in my (revised and approaching-revision) stories. (Funny that I can’t really pinpoint the theme in the stories that haven’t been edited even if they’re finished.)

I’m thinking that maybe I need a theme that is at odds with my convictions and my philosophy as it is, basically because this way, the story keeps nagging at me throughout the editing process and after; I have a feeling that it makes people think (even if it’s just me) and thus that it’s worth reading.

The result is that I disagree with everything I’m writing while I’m writing it, and if there are ever antagonists, they support a philosophy much closer to my own.

editing & state of mind

ieva — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:07:04 +0000

For the last few weeks, I’ve been sorta out of myself. This morning, I slept in a bit and for the first time in a long time I actually had some sensory experience (cold drizzling rain on my face in the morning), something that actually surprised me.
The mundane explanation is it’s sleep deprivation and exhaustion (after all, I just finished a NaNo novel), and this slipping slightly out of sync is normal.
However: I am also doing extremely well on editing (almost zero despair, even though I just slogged through the most boring 50 beginning pages *ever*), I am not thinking that I wrote all that. I’m approaching the novel as if it was something somebody wrote and gave to me, saying, “I wanted to write a novel that you would love, a novel just for you, now could you please skim through it and tell me what can I do better?”
And I’m delighted to help even if the novel isn’t the best thing ever written.

Still, I’m skimming life just the same way I’m skimming Vega, and I don’t like it.
So, basically, the question is do I *need* this state of mind to edit, and have I subconsciously developed it precisely for editing, or are the two things unrelated, and if this state of mind is doing me more bad than good then what do I do to get out of it?

december plans

ieva — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:17:35 +0000

Since I don’t want to dwelve on NOW, here are my plans of December:
- edit a couple of short stories (I mean come on, even *I* get bored at rotating three pieces around) and send them out,
- if How To Revise Your Novel course kickstarts by then, I’m planning to be an early bird,
- read some darn books!,
- maybe (maybe!) read Vega for edits, and even less likely, work on another idea (unless my Muse throws me something absolutely brilliant to distract me from Urchin).

Regarding NaNo, my headlights have blanked out again. Or it’s blizzard out there. Anyhow, I can hardly see past the next sentence, and consider myself lucky to see even this far.

editing & embroidery

ieva — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:11:53 +0000

I think that part of my problems with editing stems from the language used. It’s “edit” and “cut” and “rewrite” and whatnot. It’s violent.
On almost every other thing I’ve done in my life, I haven’t been so violent if the thing I’ve made hasn’t turned out the way it was meant to be.

For example, embroidery. If you mess up the pattern, you don’t tear the piece apart, you don’t cut the fabric, you don’t start from the blank again. Instead, you figure out where you went wrong, you tug at the thread, you pull it out (very gently). You act with care because if you don’t, you might damage the fabric or fray the thread. If you mess up badly, you might have to cut a single thread you’ve been working with and gently undo it, then get a new thread in your needle and work over the piece again. Holes? Holes are natural. Holes are the essence of embroidery, it’s what you work with. You fill them when you decide to, to make them blend in or create an effect.

You never tear anything apart. Correcting a piece of embroidery is much gentler, much more careful and loving than the first time you’re working on it. You don’t ever do it frowning, you never do it while still feeling down about making such a newbie mistake, you never do it when you’re certain you won’t do it right, or when you are stressed. You meditate, if only for a moment or two, before corrections. You treat the faulty threads gently, you never unravel more than you have to, and never unravel less than you have to. You pull the threads in. You hide the mistakes you weren’t able to correct.
You never say that your piece is “crap”. No matter how simple it is, no matter how harshly you feel all the places you went wrong and damaged the fabric, you finish it, you wash it gently in warm water with baby soap, you stretch it, you let it dry, and then you frame it.
It might end up in your kids’ bedroom or your own bedroom. If it isn’t good enough to sell or to give it as a gift to your boss, you keep it as a souvenir of the time, of the feelings, of the state of mind you were in.

It might be amateurish, it might be laughable in the eyes of masters. You might have done a stupid newbie mistake that clearly states you’re painfully new at this.
But it’s never crap, and you never tear it up.

It’s a part of your life.

flared

ieva — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 10:06:26 +0000

Normally this doesn’t happen like this. Slacking away for 48 hours, doing everything from getting drunk to baking three sorts of cake for house guests without even considering sitting at the keyboard and writing something? That’s not me. (Getting drunk and baking cake is me, but not writing somewhere along the way isn’t.)
I guess I was just too tired, or perhaps I’d put more load on myself than I should have. I was staring at my planned workload until November (finishing Vega, one more story written, 2 stories revised, Urchin planned) and when an additional rewrite request came in, I guess I just flared like a match in heat.
The first thing I am doing today is looking at my schedule (by the way, I found Timeglider to be a great tool for lightweight planning) and re-plan everything so that heavy revision takes MUCH more time than writing does, and writing itself takes much more time than I planned when I was writing furiously.
My plans for today: to sit with a large sheet of paper, figuring I’m able to write ~700 new words a day, I am willing take two week days off writing, and stuff happens. Counting in the short stories I write every month, averaging 3000 words per story..put like this, it means that every story normally should take a week off writing!
I have very little idea how much time does rewriting a scene take. I’m thinking lots of time, considering how painful the editing usually is. Probably I will have to create a full-blown plan for rewarding myself and stuff.

But then again, writing a Big Whole Novel is a lot of job. Writing 700-800 words a day is easy. Perhaps I should think about editing this way.