Weekly Update, etc.

Hmmm... What to say about this week? Well, I edited seven chapters of Nano, during which I tweezed out almost 1900 words and added in about 400. This leaves me with a negative 1500 for this week, and the whole novel at around 93.3K. Of course, the majority of the words I snipped will probably be reworked and added back in. I'm still not sure how much of this one villain's viewpoint the book needs.

Except he's crucial to the rest of the book, and without his POV scenes, the reader can't really tell why the hell people are dropping like flies. And then, he's also the most sympathetic villain I've had yet. He's got a helluva a good reason, but his premise and therefore his actions to correct what he sees as injustice are wrong.

Once I get done with all the major edits - another 8 chapters or so - I'll go through all his scenes and see what needs to be kept. Then I'll have to weave all that back in.

I know some of you are probably thinking I'm batshit. Editing the villain scenes along with the rest would've been easier in some ways, but I needed to pull him out of the picture so I could get a clear view. Kinda like throwing two jigsaw puzzles on the floor at the same time. I couldn't put together the main picture without removing all other pieces first. Once I did that, I could step back and see where everything needs to go - in both pictures.

Other than editing, I didn't get many other writerly things done. At least not for my own work. Not directly anyway. You see, I spent some time this week critiquing query letters over at The Public Query Slushpile. I don't know how much I'm helping others. I'm really trying to be helpful. I do know I'm helping myself while I do this. Looking at other peoples' query attempts seems to be sharpening my own editing skills. We'll see how much when I get Nano finished, and send it out into the world.

If you haven't been over there, I highly recommend it. It's a good exercise to help out other writers, and it's a little payment for all those writers who helped me. And besides, it gives me books to look forward to. After reading the queries for a few of these, I'm really jazzed to see them in print.

So, how're things in your world?