Haunt you every day

(Been listening to a lot of Weezer for some reason).

The editing is REALLY slow going. It's actually taking me longer to read and edit each chapter than it did to write them in the first place. I've finished editing 4 chapters; the first three I made a lot of grammar and spelling edits (like TONS) but nothing major. I completely re-wrote the 4th chapter though which is going to necessitate a fairly extensive edit of the 5th chapter. Even with the re-write, the 4th chapter feels a little weak compared to the first three. I think it's because the first three chapters focused on what was happening in my protagonist's head and on the minute interactions between characters, whereas moving into chapter four lead to broader strokes and general interaction. Of course if the whole book moved at the pace of the first 3 chapters it'd be like a thousand pages. So I'm working on my skill at painting with a big brush and doing re-writes to have the whole thing done by christmas.

So have you ever realized how frakkin hard it is to find a decent thesaurus? I've purchased 2 in the last week and they both suck monkey butt. One is just arranged SO bad that I literally can not find the words I want, and the other is arranged beautifully, but it's just a word list. The reason I want a good thesaurus is because words are freaking nuanced; just choosing a synonym for something isn't enough. Sere and Desiccated are both synonyms for dry, but their meanings are entirely different.

The other challenge has been re-learning about verb tenses. I have always just written, and never thought about the grammar of it all. My grammar has always been decent in my speech and formal writing (unfortunately for anyone who reads this, I get slack and lazy on blogs), but I never thought about the grammar, I just intuitively knew the right things to say. However during the editing process, when I discovered mistakes, I was forced to go back to the grammar books to understand why something was wrong so I could correct it. Fun stuff indeed.

Work on the next series is progressing....slowly, but my focus is on editing. Once I've completed that, I'll begin writing the next book. I have a lot of the background done, and try to do a little every day to keep it fresh in my mind.

Word of the Day: enkindle