Category Archives: Editing

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My Writer’s Toolbox a.k.a Useful Shit

Today, I’m sharing with all of you writer types some resources which I affectionately call useful shit.  I keep them in the top drawer of my writer’s toolbox at all times and use them nearly every time I write.

1. Clouds.

The warmth of the sun infuses your skin as you lie back on a thick carpet of freshly mown grass.  You breathe in its scent and let it comfort you.  The blades tickle your bare shoulders and legs, and you shield your eyes as you stare up at a bright blue sky, interrupted only by the swirling, transforming images embodied in the billowing clouds.

Sigh . . . .

Wait!  These are the not the clouds I mean.  I mean cloud computing.

I know.  I’m sorry.  I’m such a tease.

You may already know about cloud computing, but in case you don’t, it’s the equivalent of the great big hard drive in the sky.  Back in the Jurassic era, dinosaurs backed up their documents, music, photos, etc., to physical, external hard drives plugged into their computers via USB.  We modern folk send everything over an internet connection to mass storage that we can access from any computer anywhere in the world.  And most cloud services are free up to a set storage amount.

If you are not in the habit of backing up your work, slap yourself in the forehead right now.  It is imperative for writers!!  Nothing sucks worse than writing a ten-page short story only to delete it, accidentally empty your recycle bin and have no way of retrieving it (not that I’m speaking from experience or anything).

iCloud

I am an Apple enthusiast, and I have multiple Apple devices, so I began with iCloud.  Everything made by Apple that can connect to the internet syncs with the iCloud.  For instance, if I add something to the calendar on my iPad, it automatically syncs with the calendar in the Cloud which syncs with the calendar on my Mac.  Quite convenient.  For documents, however, I have to manually save them to the iCloud (unless I buy Mountain Lion), which I never remember to do, so for those I use . . .

Google Drive

Google Drive creates a folder on your computer’s hard drive to which you save all your documents. Then, each time you make edits and save, the document automatically updates online in Google Docs.  Automatically is the operative word here.

I saved all of my longer works in both places.  I never, ever want to have to reinvent hundreds of thousands of words.  Besides, you can’t be too careful.

To choose a cloud storage provider, there is a long comparison table on Wikipedia here.

2. Dictionary.com

Why anyone would use a physical dictionary or thesaurus in this day and age is beyond me.  I use dictionary.com on a daily basis.  Here’s why.

By way of example, I’m going to look up the most overused word in the English language right now, “amazing.”  No, everything is not amazing, okay?  Nor is calling something amazing very descriptive or helpful.

Anyhow, I open dictionary.com and type in “amazing.”  Here’s the definition:  causing great surprise or sudden wonder.

If there was a word within that definition that I did not understand, I could click on it and get its definition.  Fortunately, nothing about the definition of “amazing” is amazing, so I’m good on that point.

Now, if I would like to stop using the word “amazing” to describe every single freaking thing in existence, (and for God’s sake, could we please stop doing that?), I simply click on the little “thesaurus” tab at the top, and I’m taken instantly to a long list of synonyms.  If there are unfamiliar words on that list, I can click on them and get definitions as well as more alternatives.  (May I suggest we replace “amazing” with “stupefying?”  Maybe I could start a new trend.)

The same process with a physical book would require much more time and all kinds of page flipping, and, honestly, I probably wouldn’t bother.

The best part:  there’s a dictionary.com app.  And no, it is not amazing.  It’s STUPEFYING!

3. Grammar Girl

First, turn off grammar check, especially if you’re writing fiction.  Otherwise, you’ll see that godforsaken squiggly green line all over your document, and you’ll feel compelled to make your interesting, varied sentence structure into something staid and boring.  Plus, grammar check is often wrong.

For questions about grammar, try Grammar Girl.  I mean, with a tagline like “Quick and Dirty Tips,” how can you resist?  Just beneath the grammar girl header, you’ll see menus for grammar, punctuation, word choice, and even style.  A word of warning, however.  The search feature will search the entire web and not just the Grammar Girl site.

I check here almost as often as I do dictionary.com, most recently to determine when to use lay or lie and which one is past tense or participle, or blah blah blah, because I can never freaking remember.  The site offered a handy little chart which I promptly forgot.

As the tag line implies, her tips are quick, to the point, and generally easy to remember (unless you’re me).  Needless to say, there’s an app for this, too (and yes, it’s stupefying).

This is all the useful shit I can think of to share with you people, which is sort of sad, really, but I digress.

Go forthwith, writers, and conquer.  And don’t forget to use “stupefying” at least three times a day.  We too can be trendsetters.

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How to Edit 150k Words Without Beating Your Head and Your Laptop against a Brick Wall (Part 2)

Print Your Book and Read It

As Stephen King suggests in On Writing, I let the draft of my novel sit for two months with the intention of reading it straight through just as a reader would.  But I know me, and I knew damn well that if I tried to read the digital version, I would edit as I went and never get a proper feel for the book as a whole.  With this exercise I was seeking the big picture, not whether I had misused a comma or dangled a participle – plot and pacing, not grammar.  So, I spent $32 and had it printed and bound at Office Depot.

If you don’t want to spend the money, you could always convert it to .pdf and even read it on your e-reader, but I can say that picking up a printed copy was exhilarating.  While standing in the store, I hugged my book to my chest.  These were my words.  In print.  I can only imagine what it must feel like to hold your published book, cover and all, in your hands.

Anyhow, I read the draft straight through and ended up with a very good idea of what worked and what didn’t.  Most importantly, the pacing became clear, something that is difficult to get a handle on in such a long written work.  Only when I’d fully processed my thoughts on the book and the necessary changes and made copious notes for myself did I begin the arduous task of the first edit.

Just yesterday I picked up the printed copy of my second novel and will be going through this process again.

No Need to Abandon your Deletions

Many times I’ve had to delete material I thought was really good but just didn’t fit the story.  Sometimes the metaphors were particularly poignant.  Other times, the dialogue was unusually vibrant.  Whatever the case, hitting the delete button felt as awful as cutting off a limb.  It’s even harder when I think I’m losing the material forever.  I mean, what if those were the last magnificent words I’ll ever write?

So, rather than send my words off into the abyss forever, I set up a separate document called, “(Working Title)-Deletes.”  Did I ever go back and use any of it?  Mostly no.  Was it the last time I wrote anything brilliant?  Of course not.  But it made it a lot easier to be strict with myself.  Once my first edit was done, the novel more cohesive, and my attachment to the words faded, I deleted the document forever.

I hope this helps with the daunting task of editing.  Next week – my digital tool box.

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How to Write and Edit 150k Words without Hurling Your Laptop or Yourself into Oncoming Traffic

As I finish up my second round of edits on the beast that is my first novel, I have learned a few things, and I wanted to share them.  Some of these came about as lucky accidents that made the writing and editing processes so much easier.  Others I wish I had done from the beginning.

Write in sequence.

Imagine, if you will, Hawaii.  I had the good fortune of living there for three years, and it’s a beautiful place, but it’s isolated.  A flight to the U.S. mainland takes six hours.  From Oahu, a flight to the Big Island is forty-five minutes, and a boat ride to Maui is five hours.  I’ve done all three.

Now, apply this image to a book.  You can’t have islands like this in a story.  Every scene must connect to the others in some way.

Yet I had written my first novel in “islands” or scenes like this.  I simply let them rise to the surface and then I wrote them down.  Problem was, I had to spend the first round of edits putting all these pieces in order and then building bridges between them.  In some cases, I had to change or delete entire scenes because they just didn’t fit with the others.  Trust me when I say it was a pain in the ass.

However, I wrote my second novel in chronological order.  The writing process was much smoother because I knew where I’d left off and, therefore, where to pick up, and it allowed me to jump right into the other parts of the editing process (pacing and sentence variation, etc.).  In every respect, the process was more efficient.

For those of you that are rolling your eyes, I get it.  Some writers become frustrated or bored working within a structure like this, and they shouldn’t bother trying.  It will only keep them from writing.  But for linear/sequential learners and thinkers, this is a great method.

Label Chapters By Action

Since I had written in “islands,” each scene was its own chapter, at least initially.  Somehow, I had thought to label each chapter by the events that took place in it, for example, “A & T Meet at Beach; First Sex Scene; Call from Ex.”  This is much more helpful than “Chapter 22” when you are trying to figure out where in a 300 page book you put that call from the ex-boyfriend.  It also helps if you are having to move things around.

Also, a friend in a writer’s group pointed something out to me that seemed so obvious, I was astonished that I had never noticed.  You know those books you stay up reading until the wee hours?  If you think about it, those authors rarely end a chapter with neat and tidy closure.  You’re almost compelled to keep reading because you have to know what is going to happen next.  When I went back through for the second edit, I broke the chapters at different places specifically because I wanted to give the reader that “I couldn’t put it down” feeling.  Labeling each chapter proved to be a huge help because I knew exactly where I’d provided too much closure and where the cliffhangers would easily fit.

I’ve learned so much from this process, too much to share all at once, so next week I’ll address printing your first draft and deletions.  To be continued . . .