Muse

I've had Lexy sitting with me these last few days as I've been cramming at editing my book. I dunno why he is such a muse for me since he looks so totally disinterested in my typing (and anything, really). But I like him sitting on the arm of my chair, where I can fiddle with his fluffy wig when I'm trying to think of the next great adjective that I preferably haven't already used in the last page. I've made good progress though! Might not finish it this week as my deadline was, but I want it perfect rather than rushed.



I must say though, that the NaNoWriMo has helped me a lot with this goal of getting a finished book done. First there was the endurance month, where I typed like I've never typed before :D I achieved the skeleton of the story, and the words THE END.

Then came the editing. I hate editing! I wanted my book to be ready from the go and I couldn't think of it as a manuscript. Or didn't want to. I didn't want to go throught it, deleting things, adding others. But NaNo convinced me that 50 000 words alone don't make a novel. A manuscript it was, and it needed editing.

At first I let it rest, and gave it to some friends to read through to get comments. I did some tweaking after getting it back from them (my sister caught an enormous amount of spelling errors...), but couldn't quite put my finger on any major changes. I even forgot about the whole book at times, but again and again I got those NaNo emails reminding me of the ultimate goal: a truly finished novel.

And at the end of May I got this email, where NaNo had compiled all the great links to help with the editing process. The most useful of them all was this article by Elizabeth Lyon about fleshing out the characters. And it was the most eye-opening one for me. I was just like she described at the beginning: I write the story like it's a movie. I do pans of the surroundigs (not enough though, I don't do landscapes too well, at least in this novel), close-ups of the main characters and focus on what they do the way a camera would follow them. I did use point-of-view telling though, quite strongly in the Sympathy, but it was still a bit detached. you knew what LeBrant and Nigel saw and thought, but not how they felt.

So now I've been going through the chapters, giving a more in depth view of their inner workings. And when I reread throught it now, it is much better. Although I have to look out for not making it too corny, especially when it comes to Nigel and his little druid. ;) Nigel's emotions come very easily for me to write about so I tend to go a bit overboards at times. LeBrant is a bit harder to describe... which is funny since LeBrant actually shows his emotions more easily to other characters, whereas Nigel likes to keep it all bottled up. Maybe the inner rage/lust is what it's so easy to write about?

I've also started to see how things go just a bit too smoothly in this novel of mine. :D The villains introduced where wiped out in the next chapter and events just rolled on. This is still a major hurdle to cross, but I've done changes to the story already. I need those villains, for people to hate as much as the characters do!

And now I'm off to write some more...