Camp NovMo July 25: Little Things

Hiiiiiiiiiiii.

Okay, this July is not going to be full of grand ambitions since I'll be having a baby(!!!), but little things...

Conqueror Rising: I got some feedback for some potential structural edits to strengthen the plot. SO. I am going to try to finish those up so I can continue querying.

Finding Diamea: I would like to trim it down to 120K. It's currently at 126K (from 194K!) so it's starting to get harder to trim. Nevertheless! I would like to get it down to 120K before I shelve it for later. (I'm guessing I'll have to trim more from it later, so like. This is good stopping point before more trimming, hahaha. At least it's not 194k, right???)

All that Glitters: I was stuck on a part, so I recently rewrote it and it's starting to flow better? I would like to write 5k words for it! ^^;;

And that's all for now!

wowow, doing all that while having a baby (congratulations btw! :D) is SUPER impressive

not going to be full of grand ambitions

proceeds to list 3 projects
>.>
jkjk, i know you're capable of doing all this and more, Snoink! =P and woahhhh you trimmed a ton already! all the best this month, and i hope delivering the baby goes well !!

LOL. I swear, all of this is reasonable goals, even with a newborn, ahahahaha. And thank you!

@Spearmint>> To illustrate how much everything is trimmed back, on the old version you read, the 125k mark is at the point where Cyrus bursts into the room, like the merry little Santa elf he is, eager to hand out gifts. But like. In the new version, you would be finished with the entire book by that point. So YES. A lot of trimming has happened!

Current starting word count/progress shot for before I begin!

Finding Diamea:

Spoiler

Fd Word count

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Fd Progress shot

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All That Glitters

Starting with 46429 words, with the intention of adding 5k more.

Currently, book 2 is at 124981, though that number is about to expand because chapter 1 was basically rewritten and stripped of all description several months ago and it needs to be fleshed out desperately, hahaha.

I outlined several changes I want to add to Book 1, but haven't started integrating the changes in the actual MS yet.

No writing for All that Glitters yet...

I sort of want to write after I give birth, because right now I just feel so blehhhhhhhhhhh and in pain that I can't focus on anything. Which is great for editing, but not so much for any writing.

124981 words whoa,, good luck !!

For book 2!

I revised the first chapter and started working on line editing, this time attacking glue words and sticky sentences. It's now about 124.5k, which means I'm well on my way to my goal of 120k... or less!

Screeeeeenshots since I'm a fourth of the way through this editing stage of Book 2!

Spoiler

123k, yay!!!!!

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Chapters are bluer!

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I think I might get it below 120k after this round???? Very exciting!

Spoiler

I also had my baby a couple days ago. She is beautiful. <3

whooo congrats on editing and giving birth !! you're so close to under 120k :O

Yay! Thank you, @Spearmint!

Uhhhhh, other news!

I am a little third of the way through... and (barely) under 122k! So I am definitely going to hit the coveted 120k mark, I think! I just edited Chapter 10. (There are 28 chapters altogether.)

I am astonished how little Cyrus factors into the beginning, lol. There's only been two minor scenes in the story with him so far. Like, mind you. He is mentioned in every single chapter thus far. But actual appearances? Not really!

Anyway! Today I did some actual writing and revised some of the convoluted backstory involving SwAn DrAmA, lol. Excerpt in the spoiler...

Spoiler

For a long moment, it was quiet. Then Alainna blurted out, “Sergius? Why would Eurodities court Sergius?”

Archondid shrugged. “He was different when we were younger. We used to be best friends, believe it or not.”

Alainna stared at him. “So what happened?”

Archondid looked embarrassed. “I bled him.”

Alainna blinked. “What?”

“It turned out fine!” Archondid said quickly. “Diamea restored him soon after, so he wasn’t a Black Swan for long—maybe a year at the longest. Still, Sergius was horribly angry at me since I scarred up his face. He asked me to formally apologize to him with Diamea present, then punished me by tying my to a post in the desert for a hundred years.”

Alainna stared at him. “When you told us Sergius tied you to a post in the desert, I thought Sergius was angry at you for no good reason. But you bled him.”

Archondid shrugged. “I apologized.”

Alainna shuddered and took a deep breath. As much as she hated Sergius, she couldn’t help but understand his anger. “So he loved Eurodities once?”

“Yes,” Archondid said, flinching. “Frankly, I was in love with Eurodities too, though she didn’t care for me then. Instead, Eurodities hoped I would marry one of my other sisters, since that sister was in love with me.”

Alainna frowned. "Which sister?"

Archondid flinched and gritted his teeth. “Her name was Cynasi.”

Alainna raised her eyebrow. “Her name was Cynasi?” Then she paused, biting her lip. “Why does that name sound familiar?”

Archondid suddenly turned red. “It was a name you might have read about when we were reading those awful books together that my Black Swans wrote.”

Alainna suddenly frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“We used to have a group that included Sergius and Eurodities, who were a couple, along with my sister Cynasi, and me. We did everything together—until I bled Sergius. After that, everything fell apart. When Sergius tied me to the post, Eurodities hated how unforgiving he was and decided to take a break from courting him. At the same time, Cynasi was sympathetic to Sergius and grew closer to him.”

Alainna blinked. “This sounds convoluted.”

“It gets worse,” Archondid admitted. “After that, the first Conqueror was born and rose in power. When Eurodities and Cynasi realized something strange was happening, they went to investigate the Conqueror. But before they did, they asked Sergius to help them.”

“They didn’t ask you?” Alainna asked, frowning.

“They couldn’t ask me,” Archondid said, blushing. “I was tied to the post! Still, they asked Sergius for help. But Sergius refused, saying that he wouldn’t help them unless Eurodities resumed their courtship — which upset Cynasi since she was starting to fancy him, and enraged Eurodities. So they ignored Sergius and went off to stop the Conqueror together. But something went wrong. When Cynasi realized the Conqueror had left with the Black Swans together, she left Eurodities to follow them. Only to discover the Conqueror went to slay Diamea at the Lake of Memories.”

Alainna suddenly flinched. “Cynasi is the White Swan who was lost when the Conqueror slew Diamea, wasn’t she?” she asked, feeling her stomach drop. “When the Conqueror threw Diamea's remains into the lake, she dove in, just when the lake collapsed. And nobody’s ever seen her since.”

Archondid nodded miserably. “After that, Eurodities destroyed the Conqueror. As for Sergius, he tried to make amends with Eurodities, since he felt guilty for not helping when he could, but by then she hated him for abandoning her. Thus they ended their courtship on very bad terms.”

Alainna frowned. “Then she married you?”

“Not right away!” Archondid said, blushing. “She didn’t like me either after I finally was released from the post, and I was too embarrassed to show my face to her. It was only after many centuries later — about a thousand years, I think — before we married, and that only happened after I stopped the Conqueror who had bled us both. Anyway, Eurodities was happy I saved her and both of us were trapped as Black Swans, so we started to court and later married.”

“What did Sergius think of that?”

Archondid grimaced. “Oh, he wasn't happy when he found out about us, even though it was nearly a thousand years after she ended things with him. I think he was still hoping that Eurodities would change her mind.”

“You would think that, as a reader, he would have taken the hint,” Alainna said dryly.

Archondid shrugged. “Everyone has something they are silly about.” He frowned at the letter in his hands. “I wouldn’t have guessed he would still keep one of her letters in his feathers, though.”

Is this too much of an info dump???? MAYBE. But for now, I'm keeping it, hahaha.

Even if this adds to my overall word count... :')

Info dump is how we write in this house and I’m all for it especially if it’s swan drama
*le gasp*

All the Swan drama!!!

OKAY. Just a quick note, but I am officially under 121k for Book 2!!!!!! And like... I'm not even halfway through this editing pass. Which means that I have no doubt I will get Book 2 trimmed down to 120K... probably lower. !!!!

AHHHHHHHHHH. I will have SCREENSHOT PROOF in a bit, but I AM AT 120K FOR BOOK 2!!!!!!!! I just finished the Temple scene, which I am still excited about because who doesn't love apologies???? But like. I still have 12 chapters to go, so we're DEFINITELY going under the 120K mark on this round of editing, which makes me happy. (Maybe even 115k??? That would be AMAZING.)

I did actually add some words today to the story, even while aggressively cutting...

Here is a very gracious dinner invitation from Clarise!

Spoiler

Clarise turned to Alainna in surprise. “You saved me?”

Alainna squirmed uncomfortably, remembering the last meeting she had with Clarise, where Clarise kicked her in the ribs. Then she remembered how minutes before, she had begged Archondid not to leave them to heal Clarise. “I didn’t do much,” she admitted, swallowing hard. “It was the White Swan who saved you, not I.”

Still, Clarise’s expression softened. She glanced at Alainna and Archondid, then offered them a curtsy. “Tonight, my husband and I are dining with Cyrus and his friend, Archondid. They promised to meet ‌us here when the sun set. If you would like to join us for dinner, we would be honored.” Then she shifted uncomfortably and glanced at Alainna, adding, “Well, as long as you don’t mention what happened today. I would rather not let Jules know about the pregnancy just yet.”

“Since Father is sterile, he would kill her if he knew,” Adelore said. “So we would rather avoid that, if possible.”

Alainna turned to Adelore furiously, her face turning red. “Adelore! They didn’t need to know that!”

Adelore shrugged. “Well, it’s true.”

Also, this passage, because I like Adelore's musings about the truth:

Spoiler

When she decided the priestess was too far away to hear them clearly, she cleared her throat nervously. “Does Solea have any special plans for this apology that I should know about?”

“Nothing very exciting,” Adelore said. “I am to help you apologize. After you apologize, I am supposed to help Alonso bring you home, if he needs my help.”

“That’s all?” Alainna asked. When he only grimaced, she nodded at the note, still crumpled in his front pocket. “Perhaps she wrote something down in your reminder?”

Adelore followed her gaze and laughed. “That note is driving you mad, isn’t it? Though I’m afraid the truth is disappointing! Still, if you want to read it, I suppose you can. Many other people have. But it won’t make you feel better. The truth is like that sometimes.”

I also have been editing Book 4? I should probably add a screenshot of where I started, since it's always been a soft goal of editing it down by 20K words for the month, and I'm nearly there. XD Got it down by almost 15k!

(What can I say???? When I am feeling tired, editing comes more naturally than writing, hahaha.)

Anyway. I am happy!

I am going to raaaaaant today.

If you're wondering, "How have you trimmed so many words???" The short answer is "ARGAKGKAGFKGDFKADSHFKA."

The long answer?

First I read through each chapter. If there are any awkward parts, I either take them out entirely or make notes that they need to be rewritten. So like... this includes bad jokes that don't land well, parts that make me cringe in a bad way, clunky sentences that don't make sense, obnoxiously repetitive parts that just... argh, just stop talking already, and attempted subplots that led to nowhere.

For the REALLY tangled chapters, I'll outline each chapter point, see if there's any repetition involved and just. Trim like my life depends on it.

Anyway, this gets out a lot of large chunk of things!

After that, I go through my notes of parts that need to be rewritten and then rewrite them more coherently. Since I've finished my series, I know what parts are more important and what parts aren't, so that is helpful!

Then... the grammar.

I use ProWritingAid's grammar reports for this. This is like... the non-AI side of the program, which honestly is the most helpful part since it was clearly thoughtfully developed over years by a bunch of nerdy grammarians, lol. Anyway, first I'll do an overall grammar check... which is actually pretty good? They seem to be better at commas than Grammarly, which is nice. (Grammarly's interface has seemed to get worse, I'm afraid... it used to be good, but now it's drunk too much of the AI Kool Aid, alas.)

Then, after the overall grammar check, I'll use the over-analytical reports that they have available. They have a number of reports that underline stuff like sentence length, adverbs, dialogue tags, and repetitive words, and glue words... which are all things I am very much guilty of, lol. So I'll wade through those reports (wade being the key term, haha). Their reports are honestly mildly heachache-inducing to go through... they are overly complex and sometimes frustrating and sometimes it can take me days to get through each chapter because of this. (Though like... if I didn't have these flags, I would probably miss a lot more and editing would take me weeks, honestly, so I guess I can't complain too much.)

Anyway, the program only flags things. It's up to you to rewrite your clunky disaster of a sentence in a way that makes sense. (They do have a sentence rephraser, mind you, but it is AWFUL so it's not worth using, honestly.) So, then I go through each of the sentences that it flags and figure out 1) if the sentence is needed (sometimes, it isn't and I can delete the clunky sentence without any consequence!), 2) if I can rewrite the sentence better, 3) if the sentence is as good as it can be.

For the sentences I need to rewrite... honestly, like, one of the flagged sentences was something like, "She had to learn how to put on clothes again properly by herself" which I eventually rewrote to something like "She relearned how to dress herself." I forget the actual sentences, but like. Just imagine hundreds of sentences like that which are flagged to go through.

SO YEAH.

Anyway, this is how I've been deleting so many words. I am ashamed to say that the text now reads a lot better than it did... like, it's honestly a massive improvement. My family was a little alarmed to hear how much I cut at first with Book 1, but when they went to read Book 1's newer draft for me, they found all the stuff in they liked still there, found some new hilarious scenes added in which they genuinely appreciated, and liked how was easier to read. They also didn't really notice what I had cut... like, they were trying to figure it out because they could tell it was different, but the only thing they could figure out was that it read faster than it had, even with all the additions... which wasn't really a bad thing. So they're trusting me with Book 2, even though they're kind of stunned how much I've trimmed out of it, hahaha.

And honestly? I think Book 2 is even better as far as edits go. Book 2's story was always stronger than Book 1, just because there's waaaay more action and Alainna isn't about to stop and think things through like Solea would, hahaha. The stakes are higher, the threat is more real, and Alainna is not about to sit idly by without a fight.

Anyway, no one's read my edits for Book 2... yet... but I think everything I've done has just made my story stronger. The story is clearer and more gripping, the romance is more prominent, and it just smacks a little harder. I honestly can't wait to finish my edits so that I can read it for myself, because I think it's going to be awesome!