Despite my aspiration to become a published novelist, I’ve come to admit publicly (i.e., through my blog) that I am absolutely terrified by the Editing and Revising process. Completing a novel in a month, despite the praise it initally deserves for the feat itself, can and will be hindered further down the process by an intimidation of editing similar to that of “page fright,” where one simply does not know where to begin, and gives up finishing his or her project completely.
I have several blogger friends who are in the midst of revising their stories, with help from such programs as Holly Lisle’s How To Revise Your Novel. Due to my lack of current funds, and a straight-up preference for an all-in-one package of the paperback format, I’ve selected Robert J. Ray’s Weekend Novelist Rewrites the Novel as the reference to help me tackle my manuscript in a sequential and logical order.
Ray’s Weekend Novelist is a popular series of how-to books for aspiring writers who operate on a limited timeframe due to commitments outside of their writing, which may include family, jobs, and in my case, looking for a job, gym excursions, as well as playing video games such as World of Warcraft and the Starcraft 2 Beta. He incorporates techniques such as organizing info into grids, timed writing exercises, and charting plot features into diagrams and timelines. All of these tools are used in the novel revision process within the span of a single, focused weekend.
As a means to hold myself accountable to revising my novel on the weekend, I hope to add Weekend Steampanku as an additional feature to this blog, as a reflection of my Novel’s progress. Also, it makes for great post fodder to help me get back on track to providing more consistent content. In fact, The Weekend Novelist has a nice feature where a fictional character named X undergoes the process of editing and re-writing his own novel. In this case, X will be me.
That being said, I do not plan on disclosing too much detail about my novel, other than general information such as character names, traits, settings. I will try to keep my plot development general, as to not spoil the actual events of the story. As such, I will most likely attribute archetypal elements to identify plot points.
Steampanku is still an up-and-coming blog of mine, and I want to give it the legs to develop into the backbone for my writing, as well as interactions with the writing community to which I belong. I want Guardian to be a part of that blog, as it is my first true attempt at novel-writing, as well as getting a novel published at all. Wish me luck on both the novel, and the blog!
