Posts Tagged With: editing

Editorial comments from Chasing Nonconformity (Part 1)

Posted on June 21, 2014 by Michelle Proulx

I am happy to announce that my editor (i.e. my mother) has returned the latest draft of Chasing Nonconformity back to me, full of comments and ready for revisions! Upon going through said comments, I found some of them quite amusing, and thought I might share them with you here today. This is part 1 of the images — part 2 will be posted tomorrow — so make sure to come back and see the second half of her excellent and insightful commentary. Also make sure to check out the caption on each photo for context.

Without further ado …

[SPOILER ALERT] The following images contain snippets of text from the Chasing Nonconformity manuscript. Don’t scroll down if you don’t like spoilers!

Mother kindly illustrates a scene for me in order to demonstrate … something.

Mother gets sassy.

Mother gives me her life story at the start of chapter 3.

Mother illustrates her current editing situation.

Mother gets sassy, and then explains the sudden and alarming switch in pen color.

Mother gets really excited about a furniture store upon a mention in the text of Swedish meatballs.

Mother takes issue with my description of a room.

Mother is alarmed by flying eyebrows.

Mother illustrates an awkward water situation.

Categories: My Works, Self Publishing, Writing | Tags: author, books, ebooks, editing, funny, imminent danger, self-publish, writing | 30 Comments

Poem + My Editor Hard at Work!

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Michelle Proulx

Happy Monday everyone!

First off, I wanted to share this poem with you. The first line resulted from a rather silly conversation I had with my mother, and the rest followed. See if you can guess what the poem’s actually talking about:

I ate its ears in a fit of pique
Broken shards of brown
Cascade down smooth curves
Sprinkled across a carpet of cream

Also, I recently finished the re-write for Chasing Nonconformity, and I gave it to my mother to read when she went to Cuba for vacation last week. She just sent me some photos of her hard at work at the beach, editing my book, so I thought I’d share!

Doesn’t she look tranquil? She’s about halfway through the book, and has tentatively agreed to have the full edit done by the end of May. So, fingers crossed, I might actually be able to release this book this fall!

In other news … don’t forget to enter my giveaway!

It runs until May 26 — click here for details!

Unrelated media of the day:

I may have shared this before, but I just came across it again and I love it, so here it is!

Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/7uA7PAq

Categories: Writing | Tags: books, cuba, editing, funny, poem, poetry, vacation, writing | 18 Comments

Finished my first re-read / edit of Chasing Nonconformity!

Posted on April 19, 2014 by Michelle Proulx

That’s right, people — it’s done! Well, this draft, anyway.

As you may recall, I finished my third and final re-write of Chasing Nonconformity (the sequel to Imminent Danger And How to Fly Straight into It) back in March. I vowed to put the manuscript aside for a month or two so that, when I returned to it down the road, I would be able to read it with fresh eyes.

And my plan worked! Sort of. You see, the first person on my “people I force to read the awful first drafts of my books” list is my mother. This is partially because I love her and value her opinion, and mostly because I know she won’t mock me behind my back for the rest of my life if I hand her a terrible manuscript. Not that others have done this, but you can never be too careful!

Anyway, she’s going on vacation starting today. So last weekend she called me and said that if I can get her my edited draft by Friday, she would print it out and bring it with her to the beach. Square deal. So I edited and edited and edited, and … voila! Edited manuscript! Woo!

I had a ton of fun re-reading it — my dear space explorers get up to a lot of shenanigans, and it was awesome to re-live them. I re-worked the first two chapters a bit, as I ran both past my critique group and got some great feedback. I’ll definitely be running future chapters past them, as who knows the craft of writing better than other writers?

The slight problem that resulted from this editing spree is that I discovered the book is approximately 125,000 words. Yikes. By comparison, Imminent Danger is only about 94,000 words — and that was after we cut it down from 110,000 words. Obviously sequels are allowed to be a bit longer than the first book, but once you get over 100,000 words, it’s getting pretty darn long for a YA book. I get the feeling I’ll be doing a lot of chopping in the next few months. Alas!

As a special teaser, here’s a screenshot of the front page of the manuscript:

So after I get the manuscript back from my mother, I’ll go through it again for another round of edits. Then I send the manuscript off to my preliminary beta reading team — a select group of people who I know will both A) provide a quick turnaround, and B) provide useful feedback. Then more edits. Then a second beta reading team … then more edits … then probably back to my mother again … then a round of copy-editing … and then done!

I’m hoping to have it done by the end of the summer, but that’s a bit unlikely, as my best friend’s wedding is coming up in August, so I’ll be somewhat occupied with that. Still, fingers crossed!

Unrelated media of the day:

Check out more awesome animal puns here: http://imgur.com/gallery/KPQaq

Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/KPQaq

Categories: My Works, Self Publishing | Tags: alpaca, author, books, editing, imminent danger, self-publish, sequel, writing | 29 Comments

Beta Readers — The Agonizing Wait

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Michelle Proulx

As much as I complain about how mind-numbing editing and re-writing can be, I actually do really enjoy the writing process. Although banging out that first draft is definitely my favourite part of writing, the subsequent months/years of editing can be quite fun, and it’s all worth it when you get to sit down and read your finished, polished, wonderful story.

But there’s one part of writing I absolutely cannot stand. And that part, my friends, is waiting for beta readers to read the manuscript.

It drives me crazy! Working for months and months to produce a piece of writing you think is finally ready for other human eyes to see, sending it off to a select few … and then waiting and waiting and waiting for them to respond with their critiques. Obviously, I’m incredibly appreciative that they’re bothering to read my story at all, and I recognize that reading an unpolished manuscript is time-consuming. But I want to get their suggestions and get started on revising now, dammit!

The obvious solution is, of course, to impose a time limit on the beta reading process. Except that doesn’t work, because my elite beta reading team knows that I value their opinions, and that I will wait as long as necessary to receive said opinions. Curse my dependency! Curse it!

I need another strategy! Any suggestions on how to increase beta reader reading time / productivity? Any suggestions on how to keep my sanity whilst waiting for the critiques to return? Any suggestions on how to deal with people at festival booths who ramble on about astronomy for thirty minutes and scare off potential customers while you smile and nod and wish they would go away?

Reminder: Enter the Imminent Danger Goodreads Giveaway!

Click here to enter — open to CA, USA, UK, and AU.

Unrelated media of the day:

Source: http://i.imgur.com/o1RsYCS.jpg

Categories: Writing | Tags: author, Beta reader, books, editing, Goodreads, manuscript, Reading, writing | 46 Comments

Guest Post: First Draft (Madhvi Ramani)

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Michelle Proulx

First Draft

Today’s guest post is from writer Madhvi Ramani

We all know that writing is re-writing, right? By the time my first children’s book Nina and the Travelling Spice Shed was accepted for publication, I had re-written it about fifty times. That’s not an exaggeration; it started out as a story called Charlie and Nina.

So I was pretty sure that my character arc made sense, the plot was tight, and that every word was in order when it went to the publisher’s – but then it came back, covered in notes, question marks, and suggested changes. It was like being back at first draft.

Here’s a key scene from my original manuscript, in which Nina is about to discover that the garden shed that her aunt stores spices in can magically transport you anywhere in the world, followed by the published version.

DRAFT

Chapter Three

Nina walked through Aunt Nishi’s unkempt garden, towards the shed. It was old and crooked and almost completely camouflaged by the tall grass and weeds that surrounded it. Once again, she thought how strange it was that such a ramshackle construction should be paired with such a perfect little key.

When Nina arrived at the shed, she leant forward to unlock the door with the key still hanging from her neck, and decided that Aunt Nishi must have given her the wrong key after all; it didn’t fit. Nina fumbled around with it a bit more just to be sure, but just as she was ready to give up, the lock clicked open.

She pushed the heavy door open and as soon as she stepped inside, it shut behind her and a light came on automatically. Along two sides of the shed were rows of shelves stacked with hundreds of glass jars filled with different coloured spices. Nina spotted the one with yellow powder in it and picked it up, careful not to touch anything else. When she got to the door, she balanced the jar in one hand with the help of her knee, and attempted to open the door with the other. But the jar started to wobble and before Nina could get it under control, it fell and smashed.

The yellow powder flew in all directions.

FINAL VERSION

Click image to enlarge

As you can see, not only does the published version look prettier – thanks to the wonderful illustrations provided by Erica-Jane Waters – but it reads better. The sentences are slicker, the build-up of tension is greater, details richer, sequence of events clearer, and, as a result, our empathy with the main character is increased.

I’m currently going through the editing process for my second book Nina and the Kung Fu Adventure, due out later this year, and unlike the first time around, I really appreciate the process because I know how valuable it can be!

Madhvi’s book Nina and the Travelling Spice Shed for children 7+ is out now. You can follow her on twitter @madhviramani.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unrelated link of the day:

15 Tips for Handling Writing Criticism

Unrelated video of the day:

The Ender’s Game trailer is out! View, enjoy, and be awed.

Categories: Guest Post, Writing | Tags: author, books, Children's literature, editing, ender's game, guest post, madhvi ramani, writing | 7 Comments

The First Draft Edit … She is Complete, Captain!

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Michelle Proulx

As you may remember from a previous post, I was hard at work during the month of April writing the sequel to Imminent Danger, which is currently titled Chasing Nonconformity. Once the first draft was complete, I set it aside for a few months and … HA. As if. Nah, I set it aside for about a week, couldn’t wait any longer, and had an editing spree over the last few days in which I edited the whole darn thing. And now it’s edited! Huzzah!

Well, edited in the sense that I went through it and fixed all the problems I could find — which, in no particular order, were:

Exchanging en dashes (the short dashes) for em dashes (the long dashes)
Making sure my protagonist, Eris, didn’t come off as whiny and annoying (good news: if she did before, she no longer does! I hope …)
Making sure Grashk, the six-armed lizard man, didn’t come off as too angry and violent (bad news: he’s still pretty violent, but now it’s in a “playful” way, if that makes any sense)
Making sure Miguri, the tiny old wise alien, doesn’t speak with contractions
Making sure the plot actually makes sense

The last point is probably the most important one, and I think I did a fair job at it. Only time will tell, however. I have officially sent off this draft to my ALPHA SQUADRON (trademark pending), which is a fancy and entirely made-up-on-the-spot way of saying “my beta readers”. They are, in no particular order (with names changed/omitted to preserve their identities):

My mother — editor extraordinaire, famous for not wanting to read Imminent Danger because “I was afraid it would be bad”. Thanks, Mom. Approximate read/review time: 1-3 months.
My brother — master of logic and tactics. He’s excellent at tearing apart my admittedly sketchy logic and returning comments to me along the lines of “Why did they do X when Y is so much easier?” To which I reply “Because plot, dammit.” Approximate read/review time: 3 days.
My best friend — awesome, super supportive, and has no problem informing me when my protagonist gets so whiny about her hair that she (my BFF) felt like tearing out her own hair. Approximate read/review time: 1 month.
My writing compatriot — friend of many years, architect of many DnD campaigns, and excellent reader/editor/reviewer/wiki-creator/fanfiction writer. Approximate read/review time: 3 weeks.

Once these four kind souls are finished tearing apart my manuscript, it will return to me so I can fix/ignore the issues they raise. After that … I’m torn. Traditionally it would go to another round of beta readers, but I’m thinking it might be a good call to do the Mother/Daughter patented “Cutting the Manuscript Down to Size” (CtMDtS — or, “Count Doctor teaspoon”) big screen editing session first. To see a recording of one of our CtMDts sessions for Imminent Danger, click here.

So … thoughts? Beta readers or CtMDts session first?

Unrelated media of the day:

I can’t stop listening to this song. I don’t even know why. It’s not that good. It’s just so … odd.

Categories: Writing | Tags: author, bom bom, books, editing, first draft, imminent danger, logic, plot, writing | 36 Comments

Amateur Writing Tip: Stuff Needs to Actually Happen in the First Chapter

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Michelle Proulx

Let’s begin today’s post with a mental exercise. Re-read the title of this post, and take a wild stab at what I’m going to talk about.

Did you guess that I recently gave a newly-completed manuscript titled The Elemental Guard to my mother to read during our Caribbean cruise, and she stopped reading at page 64 because, quote, “Update: Page 64 — nothing has happened yet”, and I was utterly crushed that she didn’t like it, until she explained that the problem wasn’t the story, the problem was that the build-up to the story was so slow that she was bored to tears?

I certainly hope you didn’t guess that, because that would be mind-reading. And if mind-reading existed, it would be illegal. So stop reading my mind, or I’ll call the popo on you. (Note: “popo” is super hip urban slang for “the police”.)

Anyway, I thought I would share this latest bit of writing wisdom I’ve learned with you, because I’m just awesome like that. So, basically:

Stuff needs to actually happen in the first chapter. If you haven’t introduced the main plot by the end of the first chapter, you’re doing it wrong.

Here’s basically what happens in the current version of my first chapter. My daring and stalwart protagonist, Casey, wants to go on a rock climbing field trip, so he tries and fails to get his mother to sign his permission form. Then he goes to school, waffles around a bit with his friends, goes home, sleeps, goes to school, finds out his friend has forged his mother’s signature on the permission form, goes on the trip, climbs a cliff, and then falls off of it. What would you gather the plot is, from that?

Clearly the book, from the information I just gave you, is about a hapless boy who falls off stuff a lot. This is obviously incorrect, and wouldn’t make a terribly exciting story even if it were correct. Hence why you need to introduce the plot in the first chapter!!!

This concludes my rant. Tune in tomorrow (or whenever I get around to writing the next post) for an update on iUniverse and their ongoing silliness.

Related image of the day:

Source: http://inkygirl.com/inkygirl-main/2013/1/10/comic-the-plot-hole.html

Unrelated video of the day:

I used to listen to this song all the time, but it’s disappeared from the internet and is only available in HQ on one site now. So, here it is. Enjoy!

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/eggsong

Categories: Writing | Tags: books, editing, funny, plot holes, the egg song, writing, writing tips | 65 Comments

My books are here!!! There are problems, but that’s okay!!!

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Michelle Proulx

Good news first — MY BOOKS HAVE ARRIVED!!!

There they are!!! Right in front of the gorgeous rose bouquet my best friend Rhiannon bought me to celebrate my published-author-dom.

It felt indescribably good to hold my own book in my own hands, although the joy of the moment was somewhat dampened by my nagging uncertainty that there would be something wrong with them.

When working with iUniverse, this seems to be an ongoing theme.

Mother was happy to oblige my concerns. She quickly noted that the titles on the spine and back cover — which looked perfectly readable when we printed off a copy of the covers ourselves — are virtually unreadable on the actual books. The spine/back cover titles are basically cut out of the front cover image (so they’re starry red and black), except the right edge fades to black so much that when you try to read the title, it appears to read “Immin Dang”.

Immin Dang. Not the most attractive title I’ve ever encountered. No one will pick up a book called Immin Dang. Although oddly, the more I write it, the more I kind of want to read it …

Now, the iUniverse graphic designers obviously should have realized this would happen when they designed the cover. They’re cover designers, after all — this is sort of what they do. They know that the cover will appear darker when it’s printed out, and they should have compensated accordingly. Mother and I already have a phone call planned for tomorrow to see about fixing this little (major) issue. I suspect iUniverse will attempt to charge me for making these changes, although you can be assured I will fight that with all my might.

More news as it happens.

Other issues included the softcover pages being white instead of cream. Now, I chose the page colouring a long time ago, so I’m only 98% certain I asked for cream. We’ll have to see what the records indicate.

UPDATE: I asked for white. Dang. Well, we’ll just have to see how much the change will cost me.

Oh, and in an odd publishing strategy, iUniverse elected to have the paperback/hardback title for sale before I had actually approved the printer review copy. So that means there are a handful of people out there who own the incorrectly-coloured-page, Immin Dang version of the book. Original, flawed print run, baby!

BUT OTHER THAN THAT, the books look amazing! Fantastic! Indescribably awesome! WOOOOOO!

Can you tell I’m trying to cover up my irritation by overcompensating in my joy? I really am excited, but it’s hard to keep the momentum going when tiny little things keep going wrong. I will not rest until this book has reached an acceptable quality level to be purchased by the general public, dammit!

On a slightly different note, I decided to give the first hardcover to my mother. Considering how many hundreds of hours she’s put into it, I figured she deserved some sort of reward for her efforts. Here’s the dedication:

She was a fan of the dedication. Tears may have been involved.

Well, that wraps up the exciting news for today. Oh no, wait!

The FREE MAGNET GIVEAWAY!!!

Hop over to this post before Saturday morning and get the chance to win an Imminent Danger magnet. Wow! Talk about a bank-breaking prize! You know you want one! Do it!

Unrelated image of the day:

I’m feeling patriotic. Here’s my country in an amusing and scarily accurate infographic:

Source: http://i.imgur.com/gqlzDAt.jpg

Categories: iUniverse, My Works, Self Publishing, Writing | Tags: author, books, canada, editing, free, giveaway, happiness, imminent danger, iuniverse, Magnet, Publishing, self-publish, writing | 82 Comments

Random Website Idea

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Michelle Proulx

I randomly came up with this idea whilst contemplating how hit-and-miss self-published books can be in terms of quality. The story can be fantastic, but if the editing is terrible, I won’t be able to get past the first couple of pages.

Which leads me to wonder … is there such a thing as a website that lists eBooks not in terms of reviews, but in terms of whether or not it’s actually been edited?

Here’s my idea (assuming it doesn’t exist already):

This website has nothing to do with reviews — it strictly deals with whether or not a book is edited to traditional publishing standards (“E” for edited, “NE” for needs editing)
You can type a book name into the search bar, and the result is an image of the book cover with either a big, green “E” stamped across it, or a big red “NE” stamped across it
It could be called something like SPEVNE (self-publishing edited vs. needs editing)
That’s a terrible name
We can come up with a better one later

The point of the site is that it would be the last stop for a reader before they decided to buy the book. We assume they’ve already read reviews for the book … but there are people out there who will overlook glaringly painful sentence structure issues and grammatical errors when writing a review. Hence the point of SPEVNE (goodness, but that is a bad name) — discerning readers can just type in the book name and get that final quality assurance check. SPEVNE doesn’t tell you if the book is good or bad — SPEVNE just tell you if it’s readable.

Examples of the big letter stamps:

Imminent Danger, obviously, would get a nice big E. Also, notice how I worked in my book cover into this post in a subtle yet powerful bit of subliminal marketing? Granted, I probably just negated the subliminality (totally a word) by pointing that out, so … obliviate!

And thus, my idea presentation ends. SPEVNE (anyone got a better name?) should be a thing. MAKE IT SO, INTERNET!

Unrelated image of the day:

Source: http://i.imgur.com/YXDMYh.jpg

Unrelated video of the day:

Categories: Random | Tags: books, ebook, ebooks, editing, karma, literature, review, self-publish | 44 Comments

Quick Editing Tip: An Easy and Effective Way to Proofread

Posted on December 16, 2012 by Michelle Proulx

As I mentioned in my previous post, iUniverse sent me the proofs for Imminent Danger last Thursday. As such, I have spent the entire weekend going through the proofs and making sure there aren’t any typos, odd formatting, random blank pages, etc.

I thought I’d share my proofreading method with you, since it worked out pretty well.

Step #1

Print out your book. Since this is your final proof before the book is printed, make sure you print it in its final format — e.g., two novel-sized pages printed on each 8.5×11 sheet.

The reasoning here, of course, is that if you just print out your book as a normal Word document, it doesn’t have the feel of a real book, plus you won’t be able to check that your novel formatting is correct.

Step #2

Get a red pen and a bunch of sticky notes.

Step #3 (this is the most important one)

Starting on the first page of your book, read backwards up each page, going paragraph by paragraph.

At the proof-reading stage, you’re no longer making big changes to the book. Everything is where it should be. Now you’re just looking for typos. And by reading the paragraphs backward, you’re removing yourself from the story and just concentrating on the text. I actually tried reading the entire book backwards, paragraph by paragraph, but flipping the pages was annoying so I started at the beginning instead.

Step #4

Whenever you find a typo, or just a small something you want to change, correct it with red pen and put a sticky note on that page. Then continue reading.

Step #5

Once you’re done reading the entire book, go back and look at your suggested changes. You might not agree with some of them once you’ve had a chance to think them through. Remove the sticky note from discarded changes pages so you aren’t confused later on.

Step #6

Open up your manuscript file and make those changes! Do a quick scroll through of the document to make sure you didn’t mess up any formatting by adding/deleting things.

Voila! My foolproof proofreading method.

Unrelated image of the day: