That Was Quick

I don't know what happened, really.

In January, after I got done with my NaNoWriMo project, I re-edited a couple of older manuscripts I had. Boy oh boy did they need editing; for one of them, I basically stripped it down the the bare skeleton, rearranged the skeleton, and put new stuff back on. A time-intensive process, but hot d*** was it worth it! Those books are a million times better (not to mention a little bit longer) than they were when I cracked them open.

With those major projects behind me, I re-opened my NaNo project after its half-year of stagnation, allowing all the speed-written madness to boil over and become apparent in all its hideousness.

...and I'm done with that round of edits already. Didn't even take me a month. Heck, I shotgunned the last few chapters, it was going so smoothly.

What?

It's kind of nice to have a manuscript go past my critical eye so fast, but that doesn't mean I don't find it weird. Maybe that's the way it is on all my second drafts; I remember going through my earlier manuscripts with a similar speed. Maybe I have (believe it or not) grown as a writer, and my speedwritten stuff has more thought behind it than my earlier works.

However, I think the most likely reason of all is I was editing the NaNo manuscript after I'd gotten done reading my new least favorite YA book in history. In my mind, my first draft was friggin' glowing in comparison. That might have been because I didn't have rape-victim-shaming in my work, and I am more than happy to leave it out.

So, there we go. Now I need to find willing reviewers for my manuscript while I go review something else.

One more thing: with all this editing, coupled to my job of newswriting and the fact I keep writing these posts at the last minute, I'm going to be withdrawing my bi-monthly deadline for this blog. I'll keep posting with book reviews and other interesting writing-related stuff, but at the moment, I'm going to give this particular platform a break. Maybe I'll haunt Twitter more often--until the 2020 elections, when I'm not touching that forum with a 100-foot ethernet cable.

Have a great summer!