Checking in. The Nebulas were pretty cool, but I am glad I knew someone there (yay Molly!) because I felt very out of my league and impostery. I had one-on-one meetings with two authors; one who principally writes shorts (in S&SF and Clarkesworld mostly) and one who has written a novel or two. For the first meeting, I got comments back on a short and in the second, we talked through my novel. I got useful ideas and things to think about from both meetings, but the main takeaway was that plot arc and character arc both should track similarly; the two should be tied together. The story I had the comments on is non-linear, and we discussed options for making it a linear story to make it easier to pull off. In the end, I decided to shelve the edits on that story to let my thoughts simmer for a while, and I took the advice and began applying it to another short piece that is close to done. There, the advice made more sense, and I think I will be able to finish the story this summer. I have 3 or 4 stories close to being “done,” at least as done as I can make them at this time, and I would like to make progress on them to get them out under submission. The rest of the conference consisted of some panel discussions, a cool presentation by a team of four women NASA scientists and engineers, and lots of thinking and advice.
Since the conference, I have been working on pen-and-paper edits on my novel. In addition to making notes on the page I had a 3 or 4 page single spaced document with bullet points of major things I want to do/change/add/remove/update, from moving the positions of a star system by a few light years to making sure I’m in close third. I finished making the suggestions to myself about 10-12 days ago and in that time I read/re-read 5 craft books to get myself into editing mode. These included “How to Write a Dynamite Scene,” “The Emotional Craft of Fiction,” and “Seven Drafts.” Those three at least were the ones I got the most out of. And then this afternoon, I went in and made the edits to chapter two. It took me about 45 minutes, but this chapter has already been edited twice so it is in pretty good shape. The next 3-4 chapters will be similar, and then the next 6-7 have been edited once, and then the rest is vomit draft. I am holding the prologue and chapter one for last, because first of all, they need the most work, and second, I know how important they are and want to get practice, and finally, third, they are probably my weakest two chapters. So, hopefully after I get 45 or so chapters under my belt, I will be able to go back and point to the rest of the book with chapter one. At least, that is the hope.
I am further behind then where I wanted to be at this point in the summer, but I am making progress. I really want to finish before the end of August when school starts up again so I can get the draft into the hands of 3 beta readers who have been waiting to read it. So, my goal is to try to get one chapter done per day, and see what I can do. Nice to have goals.