Scalpel vs Chainsaw

          It's a week into April and I'm not even at four hours of my goal yet. Not that I'm horribly surprised. I knew that my first week would pretty much suck. I had a vacation planned with my hubby for our anniversary and I did not have time during the vacation to work on it. Still, I have done some every day that I wasn't on vacation and I'm currently working on it on the other half of my screen. It's my hope to get a few hours of work on it tonight and tomorrow to catch up.

          So today, I am going to talk about something that I've been dealing with this week and that is making the decision to cut your work. Sometimes in editing, you have to cut, not only a few of your words but a rather large amount. I had to do this earlier in the week. During editing, I realized that one entire chapter couldn't be saved. Just to make sure we're on the same wave here, I am not talking about killing your darlings. What I'm talking about is making the decision to slice entire chapters out of work.

          It's still extremely an extremely difficult decision to make. For me, cutting out a line or even a paragraph is a meh, sort of experience. I know I'm making it better and thus, I don't bother sweating the small stuff. Cutting an entire chapter feels a lot different though. To me, it's more like making the decision that all of my writing sucks and has to be reworked. It's even harder if I know that it was a chapter I had trouble writing in the first place.

          I made that decision this week. One entire chapter wasn't doing its job and wasn't doing it well enough to even re-tool the chapter, where I go through and essentially destroy the original chapter, only keep 10% of the words, kill the other 90%, and add new ones back. It's a bitch of a thing to do, but sometimes you have to chainsaw your work, rather than using a scalpel.

          Ah well, time to get back to it.

Camp Nanowrimo

          If you've been following me for any amount of time, then you probably already know that I'm a big fan of Nanowrimo. Though I understand why some are opposed to it, I have always believed that if you're writing, then you're a writer. You may not be good enough to be published; in fact, you may write only for yourself or for your friends. There is a difference between author and writer. You have to be a writer to be an author, but you don't have to be an author just because you write.

          Arguments aside, I love it, but I don't usually take part in the camp's that happen twice a year. Generally, I'm busy, editing or not writing... Even when I do try it, I've failed. This year, though, I have a novel that I need to get done. I've been editing and dragging my ass on it for far too long. I've set myself up for a challenge of 50 hours. That should be more than enough time to finish this novel. Then I can see about getting it to my editor and back again, hopefully in time to publish before this year's WWC in August.

          So buckle up, its going to be a bit of a crazy April! Are any of you joining me? What are your goals for the month?