A day of quiet and rest after the drive from Newton, Kansas to Clare, Michigan; of eating leftovers from the annual Christmas Eve Dinner and of lounging around the house with Mom and family members I haven’t seen since October and, of course, snow!
But it was also the end of the two-week ‘cooling off’ period for Saving Grace, my 2009 National Novel Writing Month novel.
That means it was the day I began the first step in the editing process: the first read through.
The purpose of this phase of the writing process, according to James Scott Bell in his wonderful book Plot & Structure, is very simple. Read the story as though it were any book off the shelf and mark only four things. Areas that:
Drag
Need expansion
Need to be deleted
Make no sense
That’s all. No editing is allowed, either. Just mark those areas and move on.
Read as quickly as possible, with no dawdling or note making other than those things mentioned above. Get it done and get it done quickly.
After that, the analysis begins and after that…well, the second draft begins!
The previous read-through sessions have generally taken one day of dedicated reading. I didn’t have that this time around, but that’s okay. Some books are read chapter by chapter around other things.
Christmas Day brought two things to me this year.