Writing Report August 11, 2023

I’m spending my mornings taking words out, my evenings putting words in.

Mornings I set aside for editing previous works.  I have novels in various drafts stages: 

• Active partially completed first draft

• Completed first draft

• Second draft

• Third draft

-- plus polishes of previously completed drafts as I prepare them for publication.

Four novels I’m actively working on plus several more still sitting in the trunk / archive file, either completed in various drafts or put aside part of the way through for a variety of reasons.

I don’t tend to do massive rewrites between drafts; once I figure out what my story is, the basic plot and conflicts don’t change.  I move a few scenes and paragraphs around, maybe add as much as a page here or there, but mostly I’m whacking stuff out.

My first drafts clock in at around 85,000-99,000 words.  As mentioned before, I tend to write shaggy and loose, so a big hunk of my mornings is changing “the door to the lunchroom” to “the lunchroom door” and things like that.  With any luck I can whittle the second draft down by at least 5,000-12,000 words.

Second drafts are executed in two steps: 
A printed copy I got through with a red pen, making the first pass of edits, then a digital second draft incorporating those changes and others I see along the way.

The secret to effective manuscript editing and copyediting (i.e., the hunt for typos / grammatical errors / missing words / misspellings / etc.) is to start at the end of the document and move forward paragraph by paragraph. 

The errors pop out faster and with greater clarity, and I begin to see where I’ve overwritten material (such as repeating information to the reader several times).

Third drafts see relatively few deletions but a lot of word placement fidgeting to make the polish draft more readable. 

For me the polished draft is the one ready for submission or publication, but I often find minor errors or flaws that slip  by earlier versions.

I tend to get first drafts done within three months, then I let them lay fallow for six months before starting the editing process.

After dinner, that’s the time for actual writing, typically starting with blog posts and fictoids, then moving to the current work-in-progress.  The serious writing, the real writing starts after 10pm when my wife goes to bed and I can work uninterrupted until 1am – 2am – 3am.

If I average 1,000 words a day I’m satisfied, if I can reach 2,500 I’m delighted. 

On a really good night,
I can hit 3,500-4,000 words,
but those don’t land every month.

Right now I’m trying to productively fill my time before tucking my wife in and get cracking on my current work-in-progress, so we’ll cap this one at 494 words and load it in the queue.

Don’t forget to sample Cheeky on Kindle Vella!

© Buzz Dixon