While organizing in my office this weekend, I unearthed the manuscript I had been editing. My first thought was to just put it in the bin with the others for that overall story. I couldn’t quite bring myself to do that. I picked it up to move it to the bin and couldn’t so set it back down – in the way of course. After doing this a couple of times I realized – I need to put this back in my purse and take it with me.
Tag: manuscript
Writing Progress
Finally time to work on my writing. Yesterday I worked on prepping my manuscript for publishing. I got part way through it. I was easily distracted though. I found out I got A’s in both my classes officially as my grades posted. I also had to deal with some work issues and running errands with Vicki.
Before my to-do list gets any longer I’m going to move on to one of the items on it and get busy.
Editing…
For a long while I’ve been working on editing a manuscript. I’ve spent a lot of time just rereading and tightening up the story. Tonight (or should I say this morning really) I spent an hour putting those edits into the file. I got four chapters done.
It felt like no time passed at all. How can something so simple be so enjoyable? I know this makes me a geek. I’m embracing my geek.
When I finished off the editing part, I said now I just have to put it in the electronic version and make a chapter summary. Well I’m doing both at once. I have my spreadsheet open to summarize the chapters, including keeping a word count.
The romance genre publishers look for manuscripts about 50,000 – 75,000 words long. Mine manuscript was at 100,000 plus. I’ve got it below 94,000. I have a long way to go. However, I decided I wasn’t going to dump large chunks before I did the chapter summary.
I’ve only worked through 4 chapters but there may be a whole chapter I can get rid of. This will be about 650 words. If I’m looking for big chunks than this might be one place to do it. I’m hoping this weekend I can get a lot of this editing and summarizing done.
The next step – at least in my mind – is to save the longer version. With a copy of it take and hack the heck out of it. When I’m done, see how the story tells itself. If it still makes sense then get rid of it and hope I’m more in the range for the genre. I’ll have to see how it goes….