I gotta focus more...

I'm editing at the moment. Deception is one of last year's NaNo books and one that I don't expect to be edited easily. It's 118k, with more scenes than you can poke a stick at.

Nano, for me, is a 'go' competition. Yes, my inner athelete starts revving on the 1st of November and doesn't stop until the end. If I finish one book, I'll start another. I'll not have an idea, really, until I put fingers to keyboard and go for it. Hell of a way to write, but the challenge works for me.

It's the aftermath that's the problem. I let the books sit. Sometimes for a month, sometimes two. This one has sat for nine (hmm... symbolic?).

Today, I decided it was time to get to it. As well as reading/editing, I do a plot outline. Eh? I hear you say. Shouldn't I have done the plotting before the writing?

Well, no. Pre-planning, plotting or outlining doesn't work for me: I get bored with the book and it never gets written; I've tried it. Post-plotting, on the other hand, works splendidly. I can see as I go what works and what doesn't.

My first rule of editing is that you can't edit what you haven't written. (Some might say 'you can write what you haven't plotted', and I would disagree.) Free-writing, unstructured writing or writing without plot, liberates the instinctive creativity within. You can't not write a truthful story. There's no doubt, no wondering if it works, no how does this fit, no 'my character wouldn't do that, the chart says so', just the flowing of words onto a page.

It is also a method of truly getting into your character without the 'interviews'. You must be that character to write from their point of view, to write what that character would do and so on. It makes your characters live because there is no direction in the back of your mind that the characters must take; they take themselves. With NaNo, it also forces you to bust through that doubt barrier; the one where you're wondering if what is going on is true to form. It is. With practice, you become more aware, more focused on what you're doing.

I've gone through about thirty pages of the book. I had to stop - it was, after all, nigh on eight o'clock in the pm. I hadn't fed me or the aged parent. With the story still firmly at my forebrain, I raced up stairs and grabbed the easiest for dinner: gnocchi with Parmesan cheese.

Of course, I wasn't entirely focusing when I dropped those suckers into boiling water. Now, I have a squillion tiny burns on the inside of my forearms from splashing, bubbling water. Sigh, had to be the most sensitive part of my skin - Murphy will do that to you.

Lesson learned, but it made me smile. The story, brought to life in the rush of a challenge, is engrossing, which can only be a good thing. Hopefully, I'll continue to be distracted by the book. All I have to do now is find a more appropriate title and send it out.

I love this writing business, minor accidents and all...