Revision progress

ByValerie Comer

It occurs to me that it has been awhile since I reported on the on-going (yawn) revision of my novel Marks of Repentance.

The journey is still a slog, but now some days it goes faster! And other days not at all, it seems. And yet, the novel now sits at almost 58K so it is definitely progress.

Some of the things I’ve been running into? Taifa sometimes comes off as a two-faced manipulator. But now, if I can manipulate HER appropriately, she comes across as conflicted, which is much stronger. Other inconsistencies aren’t hard to smooth once I find the right path. And I know the characters much better now than when I wrote the novel two years ago.

Still fighting passive voice, repetitive words, and -ing endings. And magical appearances that seem to have no grounding in physics, and yet…they aren’t actually magic, either. Great fun.

By Monday I should be into border guard territory, and there will be major cutting and slashing of words. He got really cagey and talkative in the initial draft and I couldn’t seem to get him back on track. But now I have a plan. (**rubs hands in glee…)

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Revision progress

ByValerie Comer

Today I cleared 30K in my revision of Marks of Repentance. There were some pretty fun scenes in the last couple of chapters. Fun to write…and it seems to have shown, because my critiquers’ comments proved that the situations came through as humorous as well. Hopefully I didn’t lose the good bits in revision! 😛

I am trying to streamline the writing, kill the redundancies, kill the passive voice, kill the repetitive sentence structures…kill everything that needs to be killed. And remember to add in the descriptions of the settings because these are traveling scenes. Many things to remember, in fact. All I know is I’m moving forward and I’ll have to re-read later with a fresh eye to see if I’m actually cleaning it up or merely changing it.

But I’ve backed up the files and know that I won’t be looking at them again for a couple of weeks. I may post again, but we’re off on vacation in just a few days.

**WAVES**

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Revision progress?

ByValerie Comer

My kid made a good point in comments a few posts back. The book reviews have taken over the world! Well, In My Little World, they have. I’ve spent the past few weeks head down at my desk, working hard on the revision of Marks of Repentance in preparation for the upcoming contest. My blog hopping has become an occasional crawl. Forum browsing…very little. And that has translated into very little blog writing as well, other than the obligatory ones.

I’m almost 14K into this revision pass. The crits on the pages I’m planning to submit are trickling in. I’m seeing some trends for sure. (Sensory input, anyone? Apparently I write in a vacuum!) Other comments are much less consistent, to the point where one critiquer thought a character was well fleshed and another thought he was one-dimensional. Ouch, not even TWO dimensions! Certainly there is much to think about, but I intend to let the comments brew for a couple more weeks before tackling them full force. Meanwhile I am trying to get a bit of distance so that once again, I can read (and analyze) what I actually wrote instead of what I think I wrote.

You know the old adage about not being able to see the forest for the trees. These days I feel like I can’t even see the trees, just individual leaves and twigs. There is nothing but foliage–a single word here, a single word there. I need a magic spyglass that allows me to zoom in and out at will. (**Waits impatiently for someone to hand one over…)

How do folks multi-task writing projects? I wish I knew. Some days (weeks) I feel swallowed whole.

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4 Comments

  1. I’m glad you are making forward progress on the revision Valerie. Know what you mean about the blog tours taking over the world. LOL That’s why I had to step back from all but one. I stayed where my heart was and I’m much happier for it.

  2. **rustle**rustle***rustle. There it is!

    **Passes magic spyglass to Valerie**

    Just a little crack in one lens, but that adds to the kaleidoscope effect.

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