38. National Novel Editing Month

March is NationalNovelEditingMonth. This is for every person with a novel in need of editing; now is the time to pull out the blue pencil and focus on rewriting and revising the lovely manuscript.

If you're in Saipan and you want to get together for some editing comraderie, just let me know (comment here or e-mail me).

I have two novels to edit. I love NaNoWriMo--that crazy project where you write a 50,000 word draft of a novel in the 30 days of November. I've done that twice now (2005 and 2006). Hence, two novels.

And now, March is the editing month. In March 2006, I spent edmo on my first novel. I did a good job finding blatant discontinuities. I felt the thrill of editing joy everytime I noticed a misspelled word or an error in my grammar.

But editing is not a rushed and frenzied activity, and doesn't benefit from the crazy pressure of a month deadline. Writing a novel can benefit from that hurry, because you just need to get words on paper, then you have something to work with. But edmo is the time to work with that mass, to think, to search for the threads that seem promising, to wade into drifts and ride currents, and make decisions about which way the wind is blowing, and which way it should be blowing.

So I'll be working on my first novel again. It has some problems that I need to tackle. I keep stumbling over the opening, which I like, but it doesn't seem strong enough to get a favorable reaction from other readers. So editing takes courage. To be true to one's own vision and voice, but to listen and accept the comments and criticisms of others. To venture into the creative stream and learn when to swim against the current. To set aside one problem and work on another, with focus, resolve, and a little levity.

Well, that's my plan!

I'm going for a light touch this time, so the poor draft doesn't get butchered. Laser surgery by a skilled technician would be nice. But since I'm just learning, it will be more like another rough cut. After last year's rough cut, I thought the manuscript was ready, but now I see problems. So time brings perspective, and perspective is one of the editor's best tools. And now I hope that each "rough cut" to my novel moves it a little closer to the best cut for my first diamond.

My second novel is "baking." (Yes, there are lots of mixed metaphors in this post! But you can be sure that I'll weed them out of my novel!)