Tag: Editing

Process, Random

Filling the well

Michelle Kubitz
The men in my life on a recent trip "up north" to Duluth, Minnesota.
The men in my life on a recent trip “up north” to Duluth, Minnesota.

“Filling the well” is one of my favorite cliches and it’s one that I find circling my head space when I’m doing almost anything that gets me outdoors, away from the computer, or encourages me to think outside of my mind’s normal realms of travel.  My recent trip to visit a friend?  I got a lot of work done on AL, but I also got a chance to revisit some favorite haunts that may or may not appear sometime in the future in my fiction.  The occasional nights out that I have with old co-workers?  Sometimes it is tempting to say no, but I work from home.  I don’t interact with as many people as I once did and I find that those nights are usually filled with little moments where I see something that I can use in a story – usually moments or quirks that I can put in my characters.

This past weekend, my husband and I took a road trip up to Superior, WI / Duluth, MN to show our sons the Aerial Lift Bridge and watch some big ships come into the bay.

I am officially one chapter behind on the progress I’ve been making on AL edits, but this was good.  And if you ever read a story of mine that involves a precocious two-year-old saying “oh no!” when Mommy hits the brakes too hard, it’s a moment from my own well.

Process, Random

This week’s goals

Michelle Kubitz
  • Rearrange editing calendar
  • Finish character list
  • Compare notes from v2 and v3
  • Look at notebook

I’m already behind.  But I’m making consistent progress on AL and after 10 hours of driving over the weekend to see a very dear friend of mine, I made a ton of progress on version 3. 

How do I make progress while driving?  Well, first off – very carefully.  Basically, what I do is retell the story in my head as I’m driving along.  I throw out the niggling issues that are causing me heartburn and asking questions.  Mainly … am I making things harder than they need to be?  And honestly – if you’re asking yourself this question, the answer is probably a resounding “yes!”  Some sketched out items for backstory were cut in favor of simplicity.  I figured out how to tighten the pace (that was a huge “a-ha!” moment that had me pulling over in the next town and scribbling madly in my notebook). 

I also finished my complete readthrough of version 3.  Here’s a picture of Sunday morning and the glorious three hours that I had transcribing the notes that I had scribbled while reading:

20140831_085617
Progress!

I’ll share the story regarding the motel I had been staying in at a later date.  While the place was dated, it was clean and the coffee was good and plentiful.  (And it was QUIET! Yay for quiet working conditions!)

In the meantime – this is what else is going on in this world:

Listening to: Vintage Ricky Skaggs and a new find.

Reading: I have a whole host of books that need to be consumed … one of those is going to be J.T. Ellison’s latest. 

Happy September, friends!

Fiction, Process

Plan your work, work your plan

Michelle Kubitz

20140729_100849I completed the second draft edits of “Afterlife.” To give you a clue at the lack of fanfare regarding this event, my husband doesn’t even know that.  And in his defense – I just decided that I was done with the edits on Sunday night after about a week’s lull of activity regarding my WIP.  I was sitting at my desk when it hit me … I’m done with the second round of edits.  In fact, I had finished edits when I was in a hotel room in Colorado the week before.

But this should also give you an idea of how long I still have to go with AL.  The internal deadline I had set for myself with AL was that she’d be ready for beta readers by the fall.  Conservatively, I’d say that she’ll be ready closer to Christmas.  There are still some holes, there are some exciting things that I discovered during the second round of edits that I’m going to go back and flesh out.

Next steps?  Mentally, I decided that I finished the second round of edits on July 18th.  I’m giving AL a month to rest and then I’m picking her up again for version 3.  (As you can see in the photo above, I have the binder for v3 all ready!)

Here’s what I’ll be doing in the meantime:

  • Reading “Write Your Novel From the Middle” by James Scott Bell.  The middle of my novel has issues.  There’s some pacing concerns that I’ve grappled with during v2, so I’m hoping that this helps.
  • Dammit … I wanted this to be a bulleted list.  And to be honest, that’s really the only thing I’m doing in preparation for v3.  There are other things that I’ve done to further AL.  Those include (subbullets!)
    • Reread a lot of Patricia Briggs … Mercy Thompson is one of my favorite characters in paranormal literature. Plus, the way that Briggs presents her stories in the same POV that AL is in.  It’s a good primer to see what I want to accomplish with my own work.
    • Finished rereading Elizabeth Lowell’s “Always Time to Die.”  For some reason, that novel has been stuck in my head and I re-read it on my flight back and forth to Colorado.  I tried to pay particular attention to how Lowell unfolded “ATtD” because she has a lot of story threads moving through this novel and I wanted to see how she managed all of them and still presented a pretty gripping story.  (Even if some of the romantic dialogue leaned heavily towards the cheese territory.)

Starting August 18th, I’ve taken three days of PTO from work and I’m going to devote that time to kickstarting round three of edits.  My goal is to complete that round of edits by October 11th.  It’s ambitious, but not impossible.

In the meantime, I’m going to take my hiatus from AL to switch gears and start outlining a story that I started a few years back.  I have a big problem with starting and abandoning projects.  As a result, I have about four orphaned stories that I’ve been working on over the past 10 years or so.  This story (the working title is “Summoned”) is one that has been niggling at my brain lately and I’m very much looking forward to going down that path again and setting up a road map that I can refer to when I go back to writing that particular tale.

Plan your work, work your plan … Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Uncategorized

The wooshing sounds of deadlines …

Michelle Kubitz

I had set an internal deadline of finishing edits on my Shitty First Draft (SFD) by July 1.  It is July 1.  And I’m about four chapters, give or take, behind.  However – I am not bummed by missing this deadline.  I have two children under the age of two that are running afoot, I work full time, and I really like spending time with my husband and other family members; I’m cutting myself a little bit of slack.  And that’s partially because I’m confident that I’m not far away from finishing my edits.

What’s next?  I’m wavering between giving my story some time to rest and marinate (what does that even MEAN?) or going right back into more edits.  I think I’m going to give it a little rest, partially to give myself some objective distance, but mostly because there’s another project that’s been niggling at my gray matter and I want to do some outlining on that before I return to my edits.  I worry about losing my momentum, but my instinct is telling me that I’m going to be OK as long as I return to AL before August 15th. 

In other news – I’m reading again.  When I’m writing, my reading habit becomes feast or famine.  And if I do read, I want to read something that I’ve read before (It’s my brain’s version of comfort food?  I’m really strange?  All of the above?),  I’m out of my famine mode and back into feasting on books.  I’m back to reading Patricia Briggs’ “Mercy Thompson” series and restarted the “Alpha and Omega” series.  I love the world that Briggs created with these characters – again, mental comfort food.  I’m also reading books on the Russian empire – Robert K. Massie’s “Catherine the Great” and Edvard Radzinsky’s “The Last Tsar.”  I’ve been minorly obsessed with the Romanovs since high school.  And like my penchant for mental comfort food, I cannot explain why I am drawn to those eras in history and that country. 

Happy July, friends!