Thursday, May 13, 2010

Reshaping

I finished a solid draft of Allegheny Beast yesterday, rewriting portions to make it a romance instead of a suspense book. I sent it to a friend to read, and he so kindly pointed out all the obvious errors.

Whenever you're working on a project, trying to change the essence of what it is-- in this case changing a manuscript from suspense to romance-- leaves you open to intimate errors. An intimate error is an error made not because you've failed to do the research or build a compelling character. It's an error that you overlook because you have grown too intimate with the subject matter.

In my case, I wrote a new chapter one and moved the old chapter one to chapter three. I forgot to move the exposition from that original chapter one to the new chapter one.

This is a key reminder of one of the prime editing rules for any type of project. Always read what's on the page and track where it is and where it belongs.

After you read something 1,000 times, you start to see words that aren't there.

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