Of Homebodies, Sleeping, and Editing by Konnie Enos

I’ve found that since Covid I’ve become a homebody.

Before Covid, I was the one who usually checked the mail every day. Nowadays I just remind my family that it needs to be checked and they bring it to me.

Before Covid, I was going to the grocery store at least once a week, though usually two or three times. Nowadays, I don’t go to the store at all, and my daughter does the shopping only once a week. Of course, that’s because she plans better than I do. She writes a menu plan for the coming week and then checks all the cupboards to make sure we have enough to make all those meals. She also generally refuses to buy anything not on the list.

Of course, she also refuses to go back to the store in the middle of the week when we run out of something. Milk seems to be the one thing that doesn’t last a whole week which is perplexing to me. There are only two people in our family that drink it. I only have milk on the rare occasions I eat cereal. And my daughter can’t have dairy at all.

Also, before Covid, I would go to multiple stores each week to find the best deals for the supplies and other things we needed. I would also do that for getting gifts and gift-wrapping supplies. Walmart and Family Dollar Stores were where I went the most. Nowadays, I don’t even bother going to Walmart. If I need something my daughter can’t find on her weekly shopping trips, I’ll order it online. Either from Amazon for delivery or Walmart for pick-up.

Another thing I would do before Covid was write checks and hand-deliver them to the provider, or personally take them to be mailed. I can’t remember the last time I wrote a check. Now I pay all my bills through direct withdrawals from my account or online.

When I was confined to my room with Covid, I complained because I couldn’t see and talk to my family and had to keep my bedroom door closed. Nowadays, the door is usually open, but I still spend most of my day in bed.

Not asleep mind you. I’m generally sitting up on my computer or tablet. I spend my days doing coloring, Sudoku, and other games on apps, getting sucked into Facebook or other social media sites, reading books, doing handcrafts (admittedly rarely), dealing with our finances, or working on my writing. All of which I can do from the comfort of my bed.

Currently, the one thing that takes up the most of my time is editing two of my WIPs. My fantasy is the shorter of the two. I spent about a week working my way through it. Changing my wording here and there. Changing some of the POV. Adding a bit of detail. (I’m really bad at adding the necessary details until about the tenth draft.) The one thing I’m sure I still need to work on is the POV but I’m much closer now.

After working on that, I started on my sci-fi. It’s much longer. In fact, it’s so long I’ve broken it down into five books.

I got through the first three books just editing a few word choices and, again, adding some details. I even managed to get to the last chapter of the fourth book without much problem.

Then I hit a snag.

The fourth book currently cuts off with an incomplete chapter and at the wrong point of the story line. Fortunately, the correct point is in the fifth book, I just have to move it over. But this also means I need more scenes for the fifth book, or it’ll be a novella instead of a novel.

Knowing this, I did some brainstorming with my daughter and sister. I even was all tech savvy enough to take notes on my phone, so I have something to refer to while I’m making these changes. The thing is, some of these changes mean I have to go back to the very first book and start over.

Heavy sigh.

So, Monday I spent much of the day working on the first book but decided I needed a break and went down that famous rabbit hole known as Facebook. I got off and went to bed sometime early Tuesday morning. Yes, I shouldn’t do that.

So, yesterday I tried to concentrate on my editing, but I kept dozing off. But I finally managed to get about halfway through the next to the last chapter. I only quit because I was extra tired and still needed to do my post. I opted for sleep and doing my post this morning.

Now back to editing.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

 

NANO, Sci-Fi's and Editing by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 I have been working on my sci-fi like I said I would, just less than I had hoped. I did get to the point where I was ready to bridge the new scenes with the old stuff, whereupon I realized I didn’t “show” the correct stuff in some of the new scenes, and I even once showed them doing something that came later in the old stuff!

So now I have to do some major rewriting of a portion of the new scenes. Thankfully not all of them. But the most annoying part of all this is I didn’t show my hero’s emotions correctly in the new scenes. How could I have forgotten what was going on in the part of the story I did keep?

Then there is the issue that my office has been closed for the last two days. So today is my first day back at work this week. I’m having some financial issues, and yet another check is going to be short. I can barely make ends meet if I don’t miss any work.

On the bright side, I did go through my sci-fi manuscript, and I have removed the portion that is actually the second book of the series to a separate file. That does need some changes made, but I’ll work on it later. Right now, I want to finish book one!

And I am so close. I swear I am.

Once I fix the errors I made in the new scenes, it will mostly minor changes and simple editing. And believe me, major changes take way longer than minor changes and simple fixes. The major stuff is always a problem.

The worst part is I always seem to get to a point in the day when no words continue to come. It’s like my brain shuts down after a certain number of pages of writing. I’m lucky if I can manage ten pages a day, it's usually only five, which isn’t a thing to be happening right before NANO starts.

You see, to keep up with NANO I will have to write between six and seven pages a day. Shutting down around five pages isn’t going to cut it.

It sometimes amazes me that I manage to finish NANO most years. And it is even more amazing that in 2017 I managed to write over 90K words in November. That is the year I started this sci-fi.

Yeah, we’re talking over 90,000 words in just one month. Which is on par with the time I wrote an over 130K rough draft in just six weeks. (If you are curious, that one was my story everyone couldn’t decide if was a paranormal romance, or sci-fi, and it turns out it's speculative fiction, who knew?)

In other words, I write more and faster when I am not writing romance! I thought I was a romance writer. Go figure.

I swear, most of what I write is romance. Promise.

Just ask Konnie, she’ll tell you.

But I must say I am having fun with this sci-fi, and it isn’t like I have never liked sci-fi. I’m a Star Trek fan from way back.

Actually, that is something Konnie and I have in common – Star Trek.

She even used names associated with Star Trek in her opus sci-fi. And I mean a ton of names from the Star Trek universe, both character names and actor names. She’s even got Roddenberry in there, both Gene and Majel! She actually did a great job.

She’s got a Takai and a Sulu in there and every time I read at least Takai’s lines I hear George Takai saying the line in my head! I do not have any problems with most of the others. There is that issue with her character Crosby where I always envision Tasha Yar, but generally, I just have fun seeing all those familiar names on the page.

I haven’t done the same, but Konnie’s sci-fi is set way far in Earth’s future whereas mine is set in an alien universe, so there is a big difference there.

There is one major change I’ve made to my sci-fi this last month or so and that is moving the first scene with my hero to before the first scene with my heroine. This seems kind of strange because this whole story started from a writing prompt competition, I entered ages ago. Everybody loved the first few lines I wrote from the prompt in the heroine’s POV.

The problem was that the stuff I later wrote in the hero’s POV happened well before the first scene in the heroine’s POV, so I had to make the change. Linear wise it makes more sense, so it needed done.

Anyway, happy writing everyone!

Of Editing and Re-writing by Konnie Enos

Last week Bonnie wrote about her editing woes. Specifically about all the backtracking she’s had to do to fix the timeline, and plot holes. She also mentioned discovering that my copy of book 4 in my sci-fi series started with well over a hundred pages of scenes that were now in book 3.

What she failed to notice is that I had decided to end book three at a much later point than it had originally ended. Meaning, I’d copied those pages and pasted them into book 3, where I intended to keep them. The issue was, I hadn’t removed them from book 4 yet. Mostly because I was still working on edits to book 1.

However, when she mentioned the issue it’d been long enough since I’d done that for me to forget I had. Though I did remember while I was checking those files for myself. And doing that got me back into working on the edits to my books.

I quickly breezed through book 1, which I had mostly edited already anyway. Then I worked on book 2. It took a bit longer because I hadn’t done as much editing on it previously. Then I started book 3. It needed a bit more work. But with some effort, I finally got through it.

Now at this point, what I have for books 4 and 5 isn’t enough to cover two books, but more than I need for one. Also, what I have for book 5 (both title and content) is not in keeping with the theme/pattern of the previous ones.

Though the biggest issue is the reason I ended book 3 at a different spot. I wanted the story to be a better match for the title, therefore ending in a different spot was needed. This also means that book 4 must end at a different spot.

The other issue I have with both books 4 and 5 is that since I last worked on them, I’ve added aliens and languages, not to mention other details. I’ve even changed some scenes. So both books are going to be more work.

Book five is going to be the most work because of the changes in content, plus needing more material to fill the novel. Different beginning and slightly different ending.

Now, however, I have an issue. I have seven POV characters in my sci-fi but each book has a main focus on one or two of them. (Book 1 is Hero and Heroine 1, book 2 is Hero and Heroine 2, and books three, four, and five are Hero 3, 4, and 5 respectively.)

I’ve also written prologues for books 1 through 4 but I still need one for book 5. However, I’m unsure how to go about it. Each of the four prologues is in the POV of one of the heroes. Book 1 is about Hero and Heroine 1 and the prologue is in the POV of Hero 2. Book 2 is the same, just switched the POVs. Book three is about Hero 3 with a prologue in Hero 4’s POV. Again, Book 4 is switched POVs. All of these prologues are set several years in the past. I don’t have a counterpoint POV character to provide that glimpse of the past for Hero 5. It should be interesting to come up with his prologue.

The other issue she pointed out in her blog was all the backtracking she had to do to fix plot holes and other discrepancies.

Yes, I’ve been doing a lot of that.

Either that or I’ll have to backtrack to check what I have written previously. So I don’t contradict myself. Like saying where an office is in book one, then putting it in a completely different place in book three. I changed book one only to later realize I needed that office where book 1 originally said. So backtrack again and change both book 1 and book 3 so they will match book 4. Yes, that was a bit complicated.

But I think the really fun part is when I realized I’d changed at least one scene in book 3 to take out Hero 5. However, I need the deleted content for scenes I need to add later in the story (book 4 or 5). I went looking for the previous version with Hero 5 still in it. I could not find it.

It wasn’t in previous versions of book 3. I panicked, looking everywhere I could think of for the old files of book 3. It took searching through several more files before it sank into my panicked brain as to why I couldn’t find it.

I’d moved several scenes from book 4 to book 3!

I found it.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.