Growing Pains

Editing again today. On Traitor Savant. Again. Dude, what a pain to edit something I wrote before I knew all the things I've recently picked up from my editors! I wrote Traitor Savant fourteen months ago, during 2011's NaNoWriMo. And I can barely stand to look at the horrid thing. No, no, the story's good. It's the writing itself that totally blows.

My participial phrase usage was completely wrong. That was my worst offender. I misused a crapton of the things. So. Much. Rewriting. Especially around my dialogue. I swear, half the words in the original document have been replaced. And most of them had an "-ing" at the end.

Not ever naming minor characters, or getting names wrong from book one, that was another thing. Especially when I was sure I was right, and only accidentally discovered that the Main Hall should have been the Hall of Seals all along. Much easier to handle, but I kept having to make notes to myself: Did I name this already? Look up name for X. Give these people names! I think I named this. I think I named that too, but I've already forgotten. What did I call it in the last chapter?

You know your nominal aphasia is ramping up when you forget words you made up yourself.

I finished my self-induced line editing, finally, and I get to work on coming up with names, connecting details through foreshadowing, fleshing out subplots, etc. In other words, the fun stuff! And despite all those evil participial phrases, I'm still expecting to be on target for my editing date on Monday. As Bayan would say, Bhattara na.