What Time Is It?... SUMMER TIME!

So I'm on summer break now! This means I can forget the quadratic formula ever existed because I can promise every math teacher ever that it is the most useless of math formulas and I will never use it in the "REAL WORLD." It also means that I actually have time to do things and one of those things is to edit because I have seriously been slacking. Well, not really slacking so much as NOT DOING ANY EDITING EVER SINCE LIKE MARCH!

Here's the plan (other than a school wide dance number with Disney stars):
20 Chapters = 2 days per chapter
Done first round of edits around the first week of August
Rest of summer to do a second round of edits
Hopefully have something presentable come September

It might seem a little crazy or maybe A LOT crazy but this is the only way I ever get anything done, ridiculous plans that disregard any hope I have at sanity. I want to finish this whole thing by the new year so I can move on with other writing projects so it's now or never.

Editing

So I finally managed to get a friend of mine to take a look at the first few chapters of my WIP. I'll have to bake her cookies or something to thank her. I already got the first one back with some great suggestions and I'm really excited to kick editing into high gear. It's a little daunting to get a piece of writing back covered in red ink but it's nice to know it is fixable. Good writing truly does come from rewriting. I even have a phone case that says "The art of an artist is to delete." It's scary to dive into something you're so proud of and start tinkering but the satisfaction that comes from taking a step back after rewriting again and again is wonderful!

Wrapping My Head Around Things

I don't know how this whole editing and revising thing works because I've never done it before but it is HARD! The first thing I did in hopes of making everything a bit easier was just read the whole thing start to finish. I needed to be able to wrap my head around everything before I dove in and started fixing stuff.

Some things I noticed were that the last few chapters aren't just first draft bad but really, really bad. I think it was because I was getting tired at the end or something because I had been writing all summer.  I think I'll start there, fix up the end so I can get a better idea of where the story ends so I can make the middle get there after. I don't know if this will be the best idea but I feel like it is a place to start.

Resolutions

So I made a resolution and like everyone else, it's probably not going to happen because, let's face it any decisions made at midnight aren't always the best. So yeah, even if it just lasts for a week, I want to try my best and finish a pretty good edit of my story by the end of the year, maybe even try and finish it altogether.

This doesn't mean editing everyday or making any concrete schedule but I started writing this story in the hopes that I could be proud of it so I'm going to at least try.

Here's to 2013 being the year I actually finish a novel! (Maybe)