editing | Heart of the Dreaming

Tag Archives: editing

Feb

Weaving Threads

Posted in blog | Tagged cross-stitch, editing, Lucy, metaphoric crap that is supposed to mean something deep but probably doesn't, writing | Leave a comment

I’m not entirely sure what possessed me into thinking I might be able to teach a 7 year old the beginnings of cross-stitching. But we’re trying it anyway. I made some major headway with my revisions this weekend – so to reward myself I pulled out my current cross-stitch project. Which is enormous, on linen, and has a shit-ton of weird stitches, ribbon, mixed colors and blending filaments. (Think we’re only missing beads at this point, sheesh.) Lucy watched and wanted to help, but with a project as complicated as this, I really need to focus on where I’m putting the needle – I don’t want to screw it up and be forced to undo and redo the work. (And honestly, I think I’m gonna need a magnifying glass soon – linen holes are very hard to see for me, so the potential for miscounting is very high.) But Lucy… Read more

Feb

Routine

Posted in blog | Tagged anime, editing, fox and willow, ironheart, kitsune, random, sick, updates | 1 Comment

It’s been a rough couple of weeks over at the Pang house. Between snow days and sick kids, the daily schedule has been upset a little more than I’d like it to be. And then tack on last week, which was nearly a complete waste as I succumbed to a bout of the flu/strep/anemia thing as well that hit me a lot harder than I anticipated. I can write/work through a cold, but you know it’s bad when I don’t want to eat/play video games/read/do anything other than lie there and oh god, someone come put me out of my misery now. (I did, however, stumble upon an anime on Crunchyroll entitled “Our Home’s Fox Deity” – if you thought that sounded like something up my alley, you’d be entirely correct. It’s a bit silly in places and there’s some typical fanservice, but I enjoy realizing that fox spirits are… Read more

Dec

Waiting Game

Posted in blog | Tagged drafting, editing, waiting, writing | Leave a comment

There’s a certain sort of elation when it comes to finishing up a draft – usually followed by a few hours of bliss and then a period of “Now what?” Or in my case, I get to fight off a nasty cold. Usually it’s a combination of burning the candle at both ends and “let down.” (AKA my body going into relaxation mode after a period of extreme mental exertion. Plus Lucy had a cold/flu thing this past weekend, and I seem to have picked it up. Eh.) But as I mentioned in my previous post, even though a draft may be “finished,” it never really is. In this case, I wrapped up the edited draft at about 140k and then cut about 6k off of it, just searching for word echoes and repeating phrases and the like. I’m still not completely happy with the ending, but I know at… Read more

Dec

Lost in Rewrites

Posted in blog | Tagged creating, editing, taking foreverrrrr, writing | 4 Comments

There’s this question that writers tend to get often – how do you know when a story is finished? And the short answer is that it’s never finished. Not really. (It’s partially why I don’t go back and read my own books, to be honest. I always find places where I’d really like to go and change things. Maybe small things. Maybe big ones. Doesn’t matter, though – once that manuscript is off and done, that’s pretty much it.) That being said, I’ve been working on this new book. New project. Whatever it is. And I’ve mentioned it here and there on this site and the Word Whores blog from time to time. I’m late with it. It should have been done months ago – so I tend to feel a lot of guilt that it isn’t. (Blah blah, draft done in April, two surgeries and painkillers and just overall… Read more

Sep

Page Count

Posted in blog | Tagged authorly stuff, editing, writing | 1 Comment

Even aside from all the issues I’ve had this summer, I had long expected to have this current WIP in to my agent months ago. But the editing road of the panster can be a tricky one and I appear to have added about 100 pages to it in the last few months. Which seems like an awful lot. If I hadn’t, I’d probably be done with the manuscript by now…but I’m only halfway there, as a result. However, those pages need to be there. As most of you know, pacing is pretty important when it comes to a book. Too slow and you lose your audience to snoresville. Too fast and the payoff feels cheapened. (The protag has to earn what she gets – and in my case, things were lining up a little too conveniently. Time to shake it up a little, right?) Plus, it’s written in 1st… Read more