Last time, I shared David Greenshell’s invention of LeNoWriCha (the Legendary Novel Writing Challenge) as an alternative to or supplement for NaNoWriMo, to give more motivation to write via a more customized reward system and positive feedback loop. So far, it’s been working really well. I tend to stay more in the Easy and Normal range with a few more Incomplete days than I would like…but I also get a few Heroic and Legendary days in there, so that makes me happy. I’m still plugging away on my Dark Crystal Project, and am reaching the end of my first draft.
Which means very soon I’ll begin editing and revising. Which opens a whole new kettle of fish.
I now have LeNoWriCha to track my daily writing progress and give me rewards. But what about editing? How do you track that?
I had done a little bit of editing with Ravens and Roses (even though Draft 1 isn’t complete yet), mostly just going through and noting inconsistencies. It isn’t easy to quantify progress while editing. You can’t really say “I will edit 3 pages today.” Well, you could, but editing isn’t the linear process that writing is. At least, it isn’t that way for me. With writing, you are always creating more. Editing is moving things around, adjusting, cutting. Lots and lots of cutting. I don’t know if it is possible to track editing….or if I should even attempt it.
My biggest problem with implementing systems is that I’ve always been too rigid. Too unwilling to make allowances for the irregularities of life. And I’ve always been too apt to punish myself for failing to meet already unrealistic or impossible-to-maintain goals. (Yeah, I kind of have a perfectionist streak.) So while I want to implement something to show that I’m making progress, I also don’t want to sabotage myself.
I don’t know if there is any kind of system I could use, or if I’ll just have to “do a little every day” and see it mount up. Unlike any other project I’ve attempted, this has a definite time limit so I can’t afford to dilly-dally, shilly-shally. Maybe I’ll just make it up as I go along and then create order from chaos in hindsight.
Anyone else have any tricks or systems they use when they reach the editing stage of their writing?
The Cat's Cradle : On Hiatus! 