Pranks | Graphomaniac – A. Elizabeth West

Happy Easter, everyone!

I didn’t get as much done this weekend as I wanted to. On Wednesday, I took a walk in lovely weather and, coming back, stepped on one of those evil alien seed pods from my sweet gum tree and fell on my left knee.

The doctor said I might have injured my meniscus—a squishy thing in the side of your knee. If so, it wasn’t very bad; it’s much better now. I skated on Saturday. Hey, if they didn’t send me for X-rays, I figured I’d be okay. So the rest of the holiday weekend was spent dealing with the world’s largest itchy scab and resting it as per orders.

Instead of grossing you out with a picture, here is one of some lovely sea anemones.

Image: Nevit Dilman/Wikimedia Commons

This morning, I had to disrupt my routine (!!!) to enroll in fall classes at 7:00 a.m. (when registration opened up). I have a report to edit at work, and although I finished my homework today, I’m sure there will be more posted any minute now.

So there’s a lot of “Aaack!” going on right now, as I try to organize my time.

I started my book editing by merging the entire thing into one document in PageFour, and then exporting it to a Word document. I do this so I can put it on a flash drive and cart it back and forth to work, instead of dragging my laptop with me.

The first step is dividing it into chapters. I could have done that in PageFour but didn’t want to use the laptop any more. On this pass through the entire book, I will read it through, without really concentrating on too much rewriting or line editing.

The chapters at this point are fluid. As rewriting commences, they can move around, or begin or end in different places. Sometimes I add scenes or take them away, which changes their dynamics.

Right now, it looks like this.

Image: Downtowngal/Wikimedia Commons

It’s best to end a chapter on an unfinished note, impelling the reader forward to see what happens next. I don’t want to tell you too many of these tricks I’m learning, because I can’t read anymore without being aware of them. I remember reading that Mel Gibson once said, “I can’t watch movies anymore. I can see the strings.” That is actually true. Once you learn how something works, it’s hard not to think about it analytically.

So today, I’ll work on this book at lunch, and a bit in the evening too.