Edits & Sideways Thinking

I'm more than a quarter of the way through with my edits now and I think it's going quite well. I've scrapped a lot, but rather than being disheartened by that I'm finding it quite exciting. I can't remember where I heard this metaphor, nor indeed exactly what it was - but it's like I've got the rough wood or clay into a vague shape and I'm now smoothing out the bumps, chipping away the bits I don't need and adding the extra details. There are a lot of people who say they hate editing - but the process of refining this is proving rather enjoyable for me. Of course, I haven't got to the really bad bit yet. I've also got back into working on it morning and night, which is much better for me. It means it sort of tops and tails my day very nicely, and I get an extra chapter done each day. Although I'm letting myself off the evenings at weekends!

The only problem I'm considering at the moment is one particular scene. A couple of days ago I decided I should bring it forward, reworking it to fit in before one of the key moments. I was all set to do that this morning, and then I looked at the chapter and a half that would end up happening after it and realised that actually they're pretty key to making that scene happen. So now I'm sort of stuck. On one hand, I was convinced that putting the scene earlier would give a particular decision the extra kick I thought it was missing. On the other hand, this is going to mean a lot of rewriting - and so far, I haven't done more than a paragraph at a time of that since I started edits. (Which is probably why it seems so much easier than I expected.)

So really, I guess this is the bit where it gets difficult. Essentially I'm going to have to rewrite two, maybe three chapters, changing the location and various points which feed in and out of this particular scene. I think I'll have to condense them a bit, since I don't want to push this key moment any further back if possible, and then add some extra bits afterward to fill the void. This morning I almost convinced myself that I didn't need to, but thinking about it now... yes, I do need to. The practicalities are interesting - up til now I've been making my corrections, additions and deletions on the MS itself, and adding notes for clarification in the spiral bound notebook I bought for this very purpose. I think I'll need to use separate lined paper for this though - I don't want to start using the notebook differently as I've got a decent system in place that I'm happy with, and there's going to be too much to write it onto the MS itself.

Right, there's that decision made then. I'll let you know how I get on.

As for Thinking Sideways... ohhhh, I'm loving every minute. The last lesson I did was Lesson Five, which looks at how much you should develop your story idea before you start to write it - how much background information you need, how much worldbuilding you should do, etc. I got some great story development from it for my favourite of the three ideas I mentioned last week and I'm starting to get really excited about the story. It's all about looking for the extraordinary in your ideas and making it unique, and to my surprise I'm getting on really well with Holly's rather unconventional methods. So far, I wholeheartedly recommend the course.