I swear I’m not dead, Just Busy

It’s certainly been a min since I posted here, huh?

Reason: I’ve been writing. And editing. And editing.

And I’ve been sending work out to agents and publishers. I signed a contract for a story last month and expect to be getting publisher edits soon. I also participated in #DVpit and #PitMad, which weren’t really awesome experiences. That will be a different post.

Therefore, not much has really changed. Well, actually, I’m doing more hand-edits – as in, I print out my works double spaced and go over them with a pen. I have found a payload more of mistakes and issues this way, wow. I think when I edit on a computer, my brain just kind of relies on spotting squiggles but when printing it out and going over it, word by word, line by line, I catch more and it tightens up the work.

I digitize all my hand edits after I type them in, some pages have light mark-ups, others are just 75% pen, it’s absolutely bananas. And it helps that I’m doing it because, breh, if I got some of the mark-ups I gave myself from an editor (especially the pages that are 95% pen), I would probably be forever in my feelings. At least this way, the only person I can be mad at is myself. And I do, self-directed fits do happen. Because I’m in my feelings.

So that is what I have been doing, hence all the radio silence. Writing is a relatively short time for me (I’ve cranked out a novel in two-three weeks long-hand and, on average, novellas take me about five days) but editing takes a bigger chunk of time but I’m getting a new system down with the hand edits so I don’t overwhelm myself. I edit one story (or chapter) at a time, then I type it in. Wash, rinse, repeat.