The Editing Begins

This week we have a painter in the house turning our blue bedroom and the yellow bathroom green. The bathroom, at least, is a big improvement. The jury is still out on the brown bedroom but at least the workmanship is top notch. By Wednesday every room in the house will be a different color from what it was when I moved in. Just so we can move again.

In practical terms, having rooms upstairs undergoing painting means that Busy B can’t nap in his loft/room. Too much noise and smelly smells. He’s also still suffering from a yucky cold so he really just wants to be laying on me anyway so I spent the entire morning with him cuddled up on my lap. The last half of the marathon of closeness was him sleeping on my left arm until my sleeve was soaked with his sweat and snoozing itself. This wouldn’t have been that big of a deal if the dog hadn’t also been needy and territorial about the other half of my lap. With both of them competing for space I was feeling a bit trapped. With the television tuned to Nick Jr. and the remote of out reach I felt tormented.

Desperate for something to do that wouldn’t wake the child or annoy the dog into waking the child I dialed my sister to talk about the novel. She finished reading it over the weekend and had some preliminary comments for me. Some of them I had expected while some were things that hadn’t occurred to me. She’s kind of a smart cookie.

A few of the things she mentioned were my tenses, repetitive phrases, and dialog tags. I thought about offering to get a massage to deal with the tenses but that type of humor doesn’t amuse her so I refrained. If you’re reading this I hope you appreciate it.

What I just did there in that last sentence is another thing she brought up. The entire story is written in first person except for one aside that jumps into second person for a moment. That’s a no-no. Fortunately for my dignity I already knew that and wrote it more for my own amusement than because I thought it was a good idea.

I’m not sure if this is the “correct” way to edit a lengthy piece of writing, but I need to start somewhere so tonight I’m beginning to correct my tenses. Everything will first person past tense. If I manage to weed out some repetitive phrases while I’m at it that’s a bonus. I’ll save cleaning up my dialog tags for the next round. Of course, if anyone were to suggest a better method gleaned from experience or sources I could be directed to, that wouldn’t be amiss.

On a final note, I had what I consider to be a happy little breakthrough this evening. I’ve thrown out my original working title which was neither clever nor apropos and replaced it with one that is hopefully both. For now I’ll be referring to my work in progress as Cut and Run. Yay for having a title!