#3 The myriad things I find to do instead of writing

Things I have discovered this week:

1. I can't write lyrics. I just can't. The whole 'Gemma's going to write some music' idea that I had on monday was just a complete failure because I had forgotten that yes, music I could do. Lyrics no. No. Just no. That one's on the back burner now. I suspect the only way that song will see the light of day is a brief mention in a story sometime. Haha. Probably for the best.
2. Having listened to some varied music (not written by me, thank god) this week I have reached the conclusion that the descant recorder just never sounds good. Never. Ok, well maybe if you're playing some fast moving renaissance piece. But sustained notes always sound bad. Tenor recorders are nice. People should look into them a bit more.
3. I am obviously way too critical when listening to things. I was trained that way! Sadly I have not yet worked out a way of transferring this critical nature to the written word.

I found an extremely old notebook last night that an old friend gave me. I wrote all kinds of story stuff down in it ten years ago now. A lot of it made me want to bang my head against the wall. A lot of it made my brains melt from the sheer stupidity. A very small amount of it made me think 'Hmmm. That was a cool idea. At what point did I lose that? Can I put it back in again?'.

I hate looking at it. It's not as bad as the Big Green Book of Awfulness (which I actually can't look at these days. For very many reasons.) but it's still kind of icky. But I'll keep it because then when I'm having a bad day and everything I touch seems to just fall apart I can look at it and remember that I'm better than I was. I'm learning and I'm better than I was a year ago, or ten years ago.

#2 Me and My Red Pen

This weekend I realised it's been nearly a year since I finished A Measure of Life and still haven't finished reading it through and editing. In my defense, I couldn't bear to look at it until about April, so really I've only been editing for six months.

That doesn't sound much better.

It's not that I don't like editing. It can be quite pleasing once I get motivated to do it. It's just... I'm never quite sure what I'm doing. I'm kind of unfamiliar with the whole process so I'm muddling along and it seems to be working out ok so far. But I worry that I'm somehow Doing It Wrong. Even worse, I worry that someone will find out that I'm Doing It Wrong and get cross about it.

I've never edited before. Not arrogance, for I would love a beta reader and periodically try to enlist one (then fail/get fingers burnt/we turn out to be into different writing styles/etc), but I've never edited like this before. I don't usually finish something, then go through it to edit because I edit in a crazy obsessive way as I go along. I will actually obsess over a scene (or even in exceptional circumstances, a paragraph or a word) in my head for days or weeks and when I think I have every word planned out, I'll write it down. Sadly, this explains why it takes me so damned long to get anything done (except at NaNo time).

So now I have this finished Thing and am just flailing around with a red pen trying to make it better. Mostly notes to myself to add more description (my eternal flaw). And big lines through stuff.

Things I am Looking For

• Bad spelling/grammar/Gemma used a stupid word that doesn't mean what she thinks it means/Gemma spells main character's name wrong for 70 pages (Yes, I have done this).
• Too much repetition. Sometimes I get fond of a word. A lot. In one paragraph.
• Passive voice. Now I actually know what passive voice is, I'm on the lookout for it. It's basically how I write my lab book.
• Really monumentally stupid plot holes. Haven't seen any yet, but you never know.
• Lots of other things that don't fit into bullet points, but I like playing with the bullet points.

Aaaaanyway, good things have come of this so far. I'm going to seperate the story out into three parts (Rule of threes, again. It pleases me stylistically). I may experiment with chapters. I don't write in chapters. Having procrastination type thoughts on why that is. Maybe it's because I don't notice chapters at all when I read. Hmm.

Editing musings over, I shall go back to writing the thingummy I'm writing for Deedee.