In the last post I wrote about how combing through pages helps me to edit more effectively. I’ll take it a step further in the editing process.

I’ll reread the pages and have revelations about what to edit or not…Then I’ll read the pages ALOUD to see where the flow bottles up or runs on like a sentence that never wants to stop so it includes everything that has nothing to do with what’s pertinent to the story. See? Like that.

When I speak my pages aloud, I can hear where my storytelling naturally adds a pause or speeds up. That’s also been a very valuable tool for editing. Hope it helps you!

I’ve heard other writers refer to ‘editing’ as ‘Cutting the fat’. So when compiling the ‘order of things’ for ‘Aries Fire’, I decided to write and edit the way an Aries personality acts…in one fast blub. Hmm…I wonder…Is it because Mercury–the planet representing communication, is IN the sign of Aries in my Natal Astrological chart that I possibly communicate like one?

My husband, also a writer, would say, “Just write a scene, you can always go back and put it in somewhere later.”
I thanked him for the suggestion, tried that, but it didn’t work. It felt slow and laborious. I was needing an instantaneous result. (Aries trait…la la la.)

I’m on a roll babee…SCREECH go the brakes. Ug. Coitus interruptus and writ-us interruptus are the same feeling for me. I’m in the middle of a scene and I glance at the clock. Sh*t. I have to pick up my daughter from school and drive her friends home from Robotics club. I peel my fingers away from the computer and realize I’ve not even brushed my teeth all day. No time…I snag a comb through my hair and stare into the mirror as a scene plays out in my head…Seira fights for her life against an evil brute. Her nails rip across the cold earth as he drags her to…No…he doesn’t drag her, he flips her over and she hits her head on a wooden plank…

I’ve got one of those brains that watches movies or reads books and then a year later I rent the same movie or pick up the book as if I’ve never read it! I actually LOVE the excitement of the ‘newness’ an unwatched movie or unread book provides (and ah, re-provides apparently).

I’ll pick up a book at the library or bookstore and my husband Dean laughs at me and says, “But you’ve already read that.”

“Oh. I have? Did I like it?” And then I open it again and sigh, “Oh yeahhhh.” Then it all rushes back. “I remember now. I LOVE this book!”