The Manuscript: Before I Spend, Erm, Send

Before I send the manuscript, I...

...I remember I'm an Indie Author. 

Every time I hit "send," it's going to cost me something. 

My books go through five editorial passes: 2 rounds of developmental edits, 1 round of copy edits, and 2 rounds of proof-reading. In between the two proof passes, I send it to my formatter (who edits the code, not the content).

Assuming I've reserved time with the editors, the proofers, and the formatter well in advance of my needing them (minimum 3-6 months prior), that leaves me with polishing the manuscript before I hit "send."

Since we're in the post-NaNoWriMo month, I'll focus this post on what I do before I send my manuscript to my Development Editor. Were I to pursue traditional publishing, these are also the steps I would take before submitting to an agent.

Before I Send to the Development Editor 
The story is as clean as I can make it. It's been read by Critique Partners and revised. 90% of the "who?" "what?" "why?" and "total tangents" should be gone. The plot should shine. I should also have scribbled in my notebook the following verifications:

• Casts of Thousands have been reduced to two dozen-ish. (Remember, I write high fantasy)
• Create character glossary just to be sure.
• Characters are fully developed. Every named character's goal, motivation, and conflict have been revealed. (Since I write series, not every character's GMC is resolved.)
• Use character glossary, write one statement of GMC per named character. Identify chapter where revelation is made. 
• Every scene and every chapter have a clearly stated goal, action, and repercussion.
• Write one-sentence GAR summary per scene.  (If I need to write a synopsis, these statements are my foundation.)
• Each scene is flagged as action or recovery to verify pacing.
• I make a little chart, one row for "A" and one row for "R," each scene/chapter goes in a column, then I connect-the-dots. 
• Settings double-checked to ensure breadth of "world" is being exposed.
• Make a list of where the scene takes place, in a second column note what part of the culture and/or environment are/is exposed. 

Note: Some people use their Dev Editor as a CP; I don't. At the industry standard of $0.025/word for two passes of 150k words, it's not financially sound for me to keep returning to the well for a "good enough" manuscript. I need my Dev Editor to pick apart the nitty gritty that will make my book memorable and stand-out amid a crowded genre. It's on me to address the top-line big issues before she ever sees the story.

Now, as for my beloved words list...It's long. It's four handwritten notebook pages. I do that particular clean up before I send to the copy editor; otherwise, I'd claw out my eyes.

Done Drafting Your Book? Hooray!! But NOW what??

We're in sunny Tucson, Arizona for American Thanksgiving. So many blessings to send gratitude for!

This week's topic, most apropos for the conclusion of #NaNoWriMo (good work, KAK!) is Finishing Touches: what I do before sending the manuscript in. I bet there will be lots of great advice from the Word Whores this week, though not necessarily in order.

Me, I'm leaping to the final step: the polishing stage. The very last thing I do before sending any stage of a draft to my agent or editor. There's lots of other revision passes before that, which I'm hoping the other amazing writers her will address - it's a huge topic, really - but I'm going to my last pass because I have a concrete list to share.

I keep a running document of my writing tics. These are the little habits that emerge in my writing that need to be removed for the final version. They change a bit over time, which I try to keep up with. I don't bother worrying about them in anything but the draft going out into the greater world, because I'll inevitably introduce them again at the intervening stages. I can't help myself. That's why I call them tics. Every writer has these, no matter how many books they've written. You won't perceive this as a reader, because any writer worth the title will polish these flaws away before the typical reader ever picks up the story.

Here's my list of final polishing steps, as of this fall. It takes me about a full day to do all of this:

1.                   Search for []

2.                   Search for “now”

3.                   Search for “just”

4.                   Search for “much”

5.                   Search for double space

6.                   Search for “like”

7.                   Well

8.                   Search for “back”

9.                   Wordle

10.               Search for “know”

11.               Replace towards with toward

12.               Search for endearment of the day

13.               Search for actions as dialogue tags.

14.               Search for overused dialogue tags.

15.               Search for [overused terms of that story]

Here's the breakdown of what all of that means:

Search for []

As I'm drafting, if I can't think of a word, or I need to name someone or something, I put in [], or [pet name], or [her sister]. Then, later, I search for [, to make sure I got them all. 

Search for “now,” “just,” "know," "like," "well," and "back"

These are my particular crutch words. I'm actually much better than I used to be, with not nearly so many appearances of them as in my earlier books. But, when they do appear, they tend to crop up in batches, with sometimes five in one paragraph. I know. What is my deal?? Nobody knows. But totally fixable. 

Search for double space

One space after a period. All double spaces must die. These mostly creep in during edits, when I accept changes, etc. Mainly a housekeeping move.

Wordle

Wordle.net is a terrific tool for analyzing word overuse in a manuscript. The biggest words are the most used. I use this as a final check for any words besides my usual suspects that I might need to read for and eliminate.

Replace towards with toward

I like "towards" so much better, but it's the UK usage and my American publishers insist on "toward." Alas.

Search for endearment of the day

My characters often use pet names or nicknames. I tend to salt the dialogue with them too freely. Nice that, in writing at least, it's easy to "de-spice" the broth and make it a bit more delicately flavored.

Search for actions as dialogue tags and overused dialogue tags.

I get so bored of "said" and "asked," so I play around a lot with other kinds of dialogue tags. Sometimes, though, they get a bit over-the-top. Characters can only grunt and snarl words so many times before you wonder if they had their jaws wired shut. I also have characters laugh and smile words. Like, "You wish I'd had my jaw wired shut," she laughed. Sometimes that works. Mostly, though, it should be, "You wish I'd had my jaw wired shut," she snarled, then laughed in his face.

Search for [overused terms of that story]

This shows up in Wordle, if I don't know what it is already. Like if a character has unusually green eyes, I can point that out a leetle too often, causing my editor to comment, I dunno, something like, "ENOUGH WITH THE APPLE GREEN GLARING, ALREADY."

*cough*

What about you all - what are the crutch words and tics you have to check for?

Setting Writing Goals You Can Actually Meet

Hello boys and girls and welcome to the first day of November! For a whole bunch of you I know this means first day of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel-Writing Month. Some people diving into the challenge of writing 50,000 words during the month of November are old hands at novel-writing and use the camaraderie to kickstart a writing project. Others are rank newbies, dipping their toes into this novel-writing thing for the first time.

Regardless of experience or motivation, people seem to love to join in with NaNoWriMo because it provides a clear writing goal: 50,000 words or 1,667 each day, as some like to break it down.

I'm going to provide my annual caution to that approach.

Before that, however, I'm going to answer the question I'm inevitably asked this time of year and say that, no, I'm not participating in NaNoWriMo. That's because I have a writing process already, with clear goals and milestones, and I don't like to muck with it. This year I've written between 26,236 and 62,977 words each month, for a grand total of 451,675 words so far this year. (Those low-count months are when I've been heavy into revisions as opposed to drafting.) I anticipate I'll surpass last year's count of 559,357 words for the year, because I plan to write at least another 100,000 words in the next two months. 

In fact, if all goes well, I'll write twice that as, now that I've left the day job and am writing full-time, I plan to try for 5,000 words/day, five days a week.

But I'm working up to it. When I had the day job still, I was writing 2,000-3,000 words each day, so this feels doable - but also a push. Sure I could force myself to do 5,000 words the first day, but experience has shown me that doing so can exhaust me and I pay for it with several very low-count days. However, if I treat writing as a muscle and train for it as I would for a marathon, I can gradually build my endurance and productivity.

So I suggest to all of you hitting NaNoWriMo today - don't go for 1,667 words today, unless you're already in the groove of writing that much. Instead, consider a schedule something like this:

1-Nov	100
2-Nov	200
3-Nov	400
4-Nov	600
5-Nov	800
6-Nov	1000
7-Nov	1200
8-Nov	1400
9-Nov	1600
10-Nov	1800
11-Nov	2000
12-Nov	2000
13-Nov	2000
14-Nov	2000
15-Nov	2000
16-Nov	2000
17-Nov	2000
18-Nov	2000
19-Nov	2000
20-Nov	2200
21-Nov	2200
22-Nov	2200
23-Nov	2200
24-Nov	2200
25-Nov	2200
26-Nov	2200
27-Nov	2200
28-Nov	2200
29-Nov	2200
30-Nov	2200

That will net you 51,300 words by month's end. Best of all, you might end up with a habit of writing 2,200 words each day that will be sustainable after NaNoWriMo is over.

Something to consider! Good luck to you all and happy words.