It seemed like a good idea at the time

Most of you know I've been writing like a mad woman to finish my novella, Passionate Harvest. Well I made it for my deadline and had the opportunity to pitch to a publishing house I really, really would like to work with. I'm thrilled to say one of the editors there has asked to see it. So, guess who's writing/aditing like a mad woman again to make it all shiny beautiful? Sigh. I also discovered that I hadn't written the synopsis for it. I was sure I had. So yep, I know. I do this to myself all the time.
The other so-called good idea is Mr Nell has bought a wii fit. The way it says ouch every time I get on is doing nothing for my ego. In a rash moment I agreed to be a diet buddy to my eldest dd who wants to tone up now she's able to do physical exercise again after her foot surgery last year. Apparently I'm okay at yoga. Well, the easy peasy bits anyway. I'm building up slowly into the harder stuff. Every day this week now I've been doing 30 mins of exercise. Hopefully it will help my posture and stave off the hip replacement for a bit longer. My mobility has deteriorated this year. If I don't post for a while I'm either aditing or the wii fit has killed me. Either way, send biscuits!

More aditing

This part of my writing process is always for me the most intensive part. I enjoy seeing the characters really round out and start to live rather than exist on the pages. I'm currently at chapter twenty-two and I've added 3.5k so far. This has been as tiny nuggets of backstory, extra lines of dialogue, small pieces of description to set the scene better, rephrasing of clumsy words and making sure I'm showing and not telling the story so that the pace continues to move on. When I reach the final part of the process - my backwards edit I'll ensure that each scene has moved the plot forward and that the end of the book is as strong - if not stronger than the beginning. It takes a long time and it's painstaking work but the results are very satisfying. I'm really excited about this story - it's a bit different and out there but still within the expectations I think from readers of the kind of story that I write. On to the next chapter!

Aditing

Sigh, so I axed the ending of the book. It wasn't the true ending, at least not for me and subconciously I think it was colouring the whole story. I chopped the last 1.5K and popped it into a separate file for now and I'll look at it again when I reach that point. I then started over with my revisions process at the beginning and now it's all flying again. The story is making sense and I think Kate and Steve's relationship is better, stronger and more believable. Even with losing 1.5k I'm still almost 1k up on where I started and I'm only on chapter seven. I should easily hit my target word count. I always adit rather than edit my work as I write really quite sparingly when I do the first draft. All the colour and emotion gets added later as I gradually layer in what I want. For me the process is like making a watercolour - you make a sketch then add softer colours and hues washing them in until you build a picture.For other writers I know it's more like working in oils where they build the first draft with a palette knife and then take off the layers of paint to reveal the details. Both ways work but I'm an aditer, a water colourist. Which one are you?

One home

Miss Boo is now back from Germany, complete with dirty washing, what looks like a whole new wardrobe and a new pair of shoes. The eldest belle is enjoying her tour of Scotland with Mr Nell. We get daily phonecalls plus we also got a video and a postcard. Miss La enjoyed being a lonely only but secretly I think she's glad to have her sister back.
I'm working my way through my adits. I'm undecided about the ending of the book but I think my thoughts are getting clearer the more I progress. I'm halfway through my first round of changes and I know I need to tinker with the first third a little tiny bit more once I've gone through once. Then will come my grammar and tightening edit where I lose all those words I love too much. Right now I've decided they spend far too much time drinking tea so I'm losing a few of those scenes so I can rework them and make them more interesting. A good few days should have the story where I want it and then I'll have to see what my agents verdict is - gulp!

aditing time

I think I've almost succeeded in reclaiming the house from the super giant dustbunnys. I've discovered all the things the belles had been getting away with while I finished the draft - like my youngest has once again removed all her clothes from her wardrobe and hidden them under her bed so she can turn her closet into a house for her bear factory dog - called Pudding.And my eldest appears to have entered for world's messiest room while the middle belle's been conducting chemistry experiments with the contents of the shampoo and conditioner bottles in the bathroom.
So now it's time to adit, polishing up Animal Instincts so it all makes sense, removing any inconsistencies, layering in some description and some emotion and taking out all the just. so's and really's that have crept in while I wasn't looking.
Wish me luck - I'm going in!
Although it can't be scarier than the belles bedrooms.