More Editing

I was able to complete the first pass of editing chapters six through ten in the sequel to Infused this week. There will still be more editing passes later on in the process, but the initial one is the one that smooths out the flow of the wording the most. This mainly involves looking for repetition of word usage and then finding synonyms for the words or re-wording sentences to avoid using the same word over and over.

When I have completed the first pass of editing on enough chapters, I format them with Microsoft Publisher and print them out in booklet form so that a few select people can read them at that point and provide feedback. So, I now have the first ten chapters printed in this format.

Now I am at the point where I have to spend time thinking about how the story is going to proceed before I can start writing again. I know the main thread of the story going forward, but I need to decide on what the big tapestry is going to be that my thread is going to be woven into. I don't expect to figure it all out before I start writing again, but I will have to consider a number of things about where the story is headed to ensure that it will provide enough meat to build off of.

Vacation Writings

I was able to take some time out of my vacation over the last week to get some writing done. It was nice to have the free time to write another two chapters of the sequel of Infused. I am now up to ten chapters and over 25,000 words. It's getting there!

Writing in a journal instead of directly on a computer does change the process some. Fortunately, I don't rearrange a great deal while I am writing, so I only have a few words here and there that I had to mark out. It does keep me from doing some basic editing of sentence structure from time to time though, but most of the changes that I would have made I'm sure that I will notice when I read back through these latest five chapters for editing. I even made a few changes when I was typing into Word what I had written in the journal, but most of my concentration was spent trying to decipher my scribbles - I don't have very neat handwriting and it was even worse since I did most of it while reclining on a couch in a ship.

I also spent time thinking about some pieces of the story that are going to be spread out through the next section of the book, so I am at least partially prepared for the next round of writing to be done.

More Progress

I've been busy with other parts of my life recently and I was a bit reluctant to write the next part of the sequel to Infused, so I didn't make a great deal of progress for a while. The reluctance on my part was mostly caused by my having not thought much about the details of what needed to be said in the sixth chapter; it was my own form of writer's block.

However, after writing parts of the seventh chapter, I was able to come back to chapter six finally and finish it up. I then went through and brought together the pieces of chapter seven that I had written. After finishing those two chapters, I went on to write one more chapter which I just finished up today.

So, currently I at eight chapters and about 21,500 words. I feel very good about the story so far and I have heard positive feedback from the couple of people that have read parts of it so far. Hopefully I will be able to continue to let the words flow.