At what point does editing a book become rewriting a book? Like, what percentage of lines need to be deleted or changed for it to be marked as a rewrite? Asking for a friend…
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Think of this as a glimpse of how my brain feels after editing for hours. There’s still a lot more work to finish before this book is a book again. Right now it’s more of an arts and crafts project.
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Finally managed to get an adapter to connect my laptop to my extra monitor and WOW THE DIFFERENCE. It’s so much easier when I can lay everything out and make the various sets of notes visible while I’m editing.
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Finally finished! So many colors and notes omg. One last step to go! Hopefully I can get through it quickly. Wish me luck!
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Oh no, guys! I ran out of blue tabs! That’s…probably not a good sign since the blue are changes I need to make, huh? Oh goodness someone send help.
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Color coded proofing is my new favorite method. Also, this means that Deadly Sweet Lies is almost ready for you guys!
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I’ve known since about this time last year that there would be a lot of deleted material from Sing Sweet Nightingale that I wanted to post online and share with readers. The only thing I wasn’t sure of was how and where to post it. Finally I decided to have a little fun with it and create a blog tour specifically for the extraordinary amount of material I wanted to post.
Really. It’s a lot. Word-count-wise, it’s basically a novella’s worth of material.
The sections come from all over the book–old beginnings, old endings, and moments in the middle that no longer exist. Some of these scenes still contain canon information while others involve sub-plots and story elements that no longer apply to the Dream War Saga as a whole. You will also have the chance to win one of three prizes including a signed copy of the book and some jewelry I made!
Lucky for me, a group of fantastic bloggers also thought this would be a wonderfully fun idea and agreed to help me make this happen! Below is the schedule for the next two weeks so that you know where to find each day’s scene:
November 3 – A Backwards Story
November 4 – Kissed by Ink
November 5 – Queekie Girl Reads
November 6 – Chasm of Books
November 7 – Bumbles and Fairy-Tales
November 10 – Books Complete Me
November 11 – KellyVision
November 12 – Falling For YA
November 13 – WhoRU Blog
November 14 – Pandora’s Books
In December, these scenes will all be arranged chronologically and posted on The Dream War Saga’s official site. For now, head over to these blogs on the dates listed and get a behind-the-scenes look at the editing process of Sing Sweet Nightingale.
I’ve heard more than a few times that you better love writing to make it a career. Having started to make it my career, all I can say to that is YES. SO TRUE.
Even voracious, lifelong readers don’t always know what goes in to producing a single novel. Just on the editorial side. It’s intense. It’s brutally intense. So much so that you will probably end up on the verge of printing your entire book just so you can rip it up, throw the pieces into a trash can, and then burn it all. Or maybe that’s just me…
Sing Sweet Nightingale is now completely through line edits and sitting in the copyeditor’s inbox, waiting for them to go through and tell me how bad I am at commas (which I already know). After one or two copyediting passes (I’m honestly not sure), then page proof, and then, I think, galleys? That is the point in time when I’ll actually be able to hold a book that I wrote in my hands. Something with a cover and a pretty layout and my name on multiple pages and OMG. I think I might start freaking out soon. And it’s not even here yet!
While I’m waiting on revisions on another project and copyedits from Spencer Hill, I’ve been jumping between reading and working on two different contemporary projects. Mostly, though, I’ve been trying to give my brain a little bit of a break before the insanity begins again with book 2 of The Dream War Saga.
So that’s it! That’s what’s happening in my life. Preparing for more edits and also for my upcoming trip west for the Vegas Valley Book Festival! I’m especially excited about that trip because I get to see my bestie Lani and my friend Vivi Barnes, whose book Olivia Twisted is out soon! If you’re going to be in the area, I hope you’ll swing by the festival on Saturday. I will have bookmarks to sign and maybe a copy or two of Doorways to Extra Time to give away.
And now, back to my regularly scheduled programming. Otherwise known as the day job… >.<
This weekend I did something I have never done before. I read Sing Sweet Nightingale in its entirety to my younger sister. Not that Haley couldn’t have read it herself, but she’s already read this book five or six times and I needed to read it aloud anyway for editing purposes. She hasn’t read the latest draft, so she volunteered to listen. Two birds and one stone and all that.
I already knew that reading text aloud can help you catch errors you wouldn’t see while reading silently (the human brain is such a strange place), but I wasn’t aware how much it could change your experience of your own book to read it to someone else. Moments that didn’t seem that amusing on the page are suddenly giggle-worthy and action sequences fly past as you read with the speed of a blow-by-blow fight commentator. The flip side is also possible, though. Moments you thought would be tear-jerking don’t come off with the same power as you thought they had or that dialogue you thought hid the massive exposition you needed to slip in doesn’t play it’s part as well as you’d hoped. Whatever the realization, good or bad, it’s worth the time and the slightly raw throat to read your book aloud. Preferably to an audience. Even if it’s an audience of one.
What this impromptu reading means in the larger scope of my life, though, is that I’m pretty much done with this round of edits! I’m waiting for one or two other beta readers to get back to me with notes (hopefully just to tell me I made all the right changes), then the draft goes back to the wonderful editresses for the next round! Line edits, I think. Which should be interesting. I’ve never done line edits before. It should be an experience, to say the least. The idea of examining each of my words with that much attention to detail is… daunting. In a good way, but daunting nonetheless.
I’m also nearing the time when I get to begin editing another project–something entirely different from anything else I have in the works and a project that I LOVE SO MUCH. The excitement level for this book is just, whoa. Love it. Things are happening with it and I really can’t wait to share more details, but for now, that’s it! Tis still in the works and up in the air, so I don’t want to say something now and have it not be true later. SEKRITS ARE FUN! Not really, but whatever. I have to pretend they are or I might go a little crazy. 😉
And, um… that’s it for now! Later, lovelies! <3
I’ve been considering it for a while and I have finally decided to just go for it. Blogger hasn’t been giving me the functionality I’ve wanted and Google has been making me a little mad by cutting out services I like (why kill the Reader, Google. Really?). Originally, I wanted to switch platforms and have a complete custom redesign along the way, but that isn’t going to happen right now. I want all the bells and whistles and I don’t have the money to pay for them. However, I found a WordPress template that has most of the features I wanted so I decided to switch to their free platform and hope for the best.
Thus, the new look! Also, you may notice that the URL at the top of the page is not quite as simplified as my old one. That’s one thing Blogger definitely does better than WordPress–custom domain names pointing to your site. You can still get here by typing byericacameron.com, but after that everything will be a little longer in the navigation bar. WordPress, if you’re listening, it’d be nice if you could fix that. I already pay for a domain name. I REALLY don’t want to pay you for the right to use it, too.
Other than the site switch, I’m still working on Sing Sweet Nightingale edits. Right now I’m about 100 pages from the end, but I think this round is going to take multiple passes and read throughs because of all the tiny tweaks I’m making. It’s been an interesting process. Well, the whole publication process has been a learning experience, but this is different. I’m not a details person, but I have to be now. I have to look at all the tiny questions I never answered–never really considered–and make it all fit. Here’s hoping I pull it off!
Also, let me know what you think about the site! I may change the background if I find one I like more, but this one is kind of cool. Are those darker blue shapes flowers? Are the the silhouettes of skulls? WHO KNOWS? I don’t. 😉
