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Editing my novel/ Update on my novel:

So, let’s get one thing straight. My book has been ready to go since October… It should have been published already, so this is not normal. The only problem is for the life of me, I don’t know how to format anything properly. 

Take a computer word processing class? Right, I never did that. Now I have to rely on proffessional assistance. Maybe some day …. someone will show me how to do it. Till then I have to smile and pretend everything is okay…..(It’s not) 

So basically, I’ve been waiting for that process to be completed. During that process, I’ve been patient with the back and forth “When will my manuscript be formatted?”, plus winter vacation, plus being bedridden. 

During that time period…. I wanted to scream. When I re-read the manuscript, I found so many grammatical errors…. the simplest things that go unnoticed when you hand in your final version. For whatever reason, it didn’t catch my eye. I should have seen it because sometimes microsoft word underlines things right? I didn’t check everything out, call it stress, rushing, or trying to speed through everything.

Anyways, at first it was just a line here and there, that needed to be updated or changed that didn’t sound right…. or had the wrong vibe, then it was grammatical errors. Not too much to worry about. Then the grammatical mistakes and misspellings seemed to magnify…. I found things that I had missed earlier. Until winter break I had a good 16-20 pages to hand in, that needed to be updated (new scenes). Finally I decided I will re-do the whole damn thing myself. This is formatting, so it just would have been easier to start over. 

I don’t mean a WHOLE new manuscript, I meant I am doing the editing myself. You probably don’t understand what I am saying and that’s fine. 

So the good news, is that my book will be closer to what I had innitially wanted, 250 pages? I won’t know for sure how many pages until it is properly formatted.  

I have some new scenes. There’s a couple chapters that could be better….. as far as the plot, what’s going on in those chapters…. “This, and this, and this happened” ….. but it could be so much better if it had a “deeper” plot, not like, “These people went to this place and then this place, and did these things, and then that’s why these things happened” But more like, “wow, this happened and this happened, and isn’t that so weird and strange and interesting?” So I think, I can steer the plot into some deeper meaning or some underlying, interconnecting thing. That will really pull the readers into the plot and keep them interested.  

So I don’t see that as extra work, at all. I take pride and joy, in doing the extra work. New scenes, interest me, and excite me. Doing the editing myself makes me very happy, too. Knowing that I will be able to hand it in, and have it formatted. No one will do the “extra editing for me.” Simply put, I think I am the only person qualified when it’s not a technical thing I need help with. Does that make sense? I hope it does. 

But I digress, If I am happy, other people will not know, because I have been overworked, and they can’t understand what I’ve been working on. Since there’s no physical completion of the book. Let’s just say I have been working non-stop for two days since I felt better health-wise. And I am ready to just finish it once and for all. I feel like, my body wants to move around a lot, but I know, I should keep sitting in my camping chair and working with my laptop 24/7. 

It also helps not to be distracted by anything, especially on my flatscreen.  

Mood storms and forest ambience is the only thing I’ll allow, for now. 

Couple new “deeper” scenes… Check grammar….  

Hopefully very soon I will be done. Fifteen chapters. I am only on chapter 4 right now 😭 

-D

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