Getting Cozy With Editing

October 6th seems like so long ago. One reason for that is that's the day I completed my first draft of Spirit Hackers. Since then my life has been busy with the holidays and other events but my mind has never been far from the dreaded next step: editing.

I'll give you all a moment to calm your churning stomachs.

I know nothing makes me feel dreadful about writing like editing does. It's something I look at as a non-creative process meant solely for fixing and improving. Not that I think it's unnecessary but I'll be the first to admit I'm slogging through it all.

So Spirit Hackers has been going through the first round of edits and I've been making corrections, clarifications and general sprucing-up of the WIP. The overall story and progression has remained intact which helps avoid the 'ripple effect' of making a major change in the story and needing to update the story everywhere else.

At times it's been slow going and other times I get only a few minutes in but progress is progress. Right now I'm about 50% through my round of edits and then I'll be shipping it out to a few beta readers. I know the book will need a bunch of changes and tweaks after those people present their notes along with the error of my ways.

Lately I've been poking my head into the world of agents and querying. I've seen agents posting to twitter and I even signed up for Querytracker.com. Of course it's getting ahead of myself a little but knowing that these are people I'll be communicating with in not-so-short of a time helps keep the motivation going.

Finally, my other motivation (aside from giving this book a fighting chance in the world) is to take the time my beta readers will use to do their thing and begin work on my next project. I have a new novel idea baking in my mind along as well as taking a strange dream I had last year that I think will make a good short story. Both are in the scifi / fantasy realm so I think my genre is just getting further reinforced. The dream was something I wrote down as soon as I woke up and will be interesting. It could also be a bust. We shall see.

For now I'll continue making word changes and fixes to Spirit Hackers and slowly bring this novel closer to the reality of being a real book one day.