Justicar Jhee and the Spectral Armada
A Justicar Jhee Mystery
A Justicar Jhee Mystery
Today is the start of National Novel Editing Month (NaNoEdMo). Because I’m still not done with Book 1, I opted for the crazy pants route of editing Book 1 and Book 2 at once. Wish me luck.
While still firmly entrenched in editing the muddy middle, the way feels a bit easier. I had to re-imagine a few scenes from the ground up and invent material out of whole cloth for them. This helped tame some mega-scenes and clarify the sequences. With them pacified, the editing pace picked up. I made it through to a patch of scenes where I’m transferring old material with a few tweaks and additions. I turned the major ScratchPad snippets file into a document which has made it much easier to find material when I needed. Although, I still have material spread out over too many documents.
I got no prep work for edits done before today. I started a read through and scene listing. Once done, I must resist diving into a reorganization and synopsis like Book 1. The location shift and fuzzy theme makes that feel premature. A key character in this book needs some serious beefing up. The more urban setting threatens a larger research burden than the other stories.
With the full plate I’m going to have for this month, I suspect April will start the same way March did with working on two edits at once. My hope is the cleaner copy and better thought out story won’t bog down during the edits as much. Fingers crossed. So far, I haven’t wanted to redo the core story, just tweak or add backstories, relationships, and motivations. The details will likely change, but the fundamentals are still holding. I’ve also got a better sense of the trilogy’s tone and voice.
Have a lovely day!