Finished some of my winter planting (the pansies, I have nearly 200 bulbs left to plant…yikes!) this weekend. Fighting a cold though so I spent most of the rest indoors. Jai came over for dinner Saturday evening (Ian made a scrumptious chicken tabouleh) and we played X-Men:Legends on the PS2 for a while.

Trying to edit my novella I recently completed. So far I’m still pleased with the work, it might even be publishable. The characters are a little too good (there aren’t really any dark or twisted characters), but that kind of story can still work. I definitely need to have a story soon that is darker in tone, a protagonist troubled by his or her own demons, a flawed, imperfect hero(ine).

My editing approach (the first time I’ve done a serious edit other than just scroll through and fix glaring issues) is this:

*Print and read backwards, searching for spelling errors, grammatical typos. You read word for word backwards, then re-read the sentence forwards, then the paragraph forwards. It helps you catch not just spelling and grammar, but repetitive statements and overuse of a particular word in a section as well as similar errors.

*Then, I’m going to read the story through from beginning to end and hopefully catch plot and character inconsistencies, weak areas. Probably do this on the typed, edited version.

*Finally, make all my changes on the computer and read it through it one more time, most likely printed out. I enjoy composing my works on the computer, but editing and reading I still prefer paper.

At that point comes the decision of whether I believe it is print-worthy. To hell with it, I know me, I’ll send it out regardless just to try!

As for the darker story, I’m itching to do something set in a dark near-future setting along the lines of Bladerunner, Gibson’s cyberpunk world, etc. Just need some good, troubled characters and an interesting story.