I’ve never actually done this before. Editing my own fiction, I mean. Back when I was a teenager and writing novel-length extended short stories about angst, imagination, isolation, and vampires (you had to know that was coming), seemed like a better way to fill the time than, say, attending high school…. Well, I’d write it all out longhand, maybe make one or two minor changes – usually spell-check assisted – while typing them into WordPerfect for Windows on my mum’s creaky Compaq, and then get to work on another “book” while the first one was shaking the dust off the walls via Okidata dot-matrix printer.
Yes. I’m that old.
So far, it hasn’t been as horrible as I expected. The Project was written in puzzle pieces, from the kind with lots of blue space between images, and it’s the blue spaces I’m trying to piece together, now. A couple of hours a day. Squinting at the different hues of blue among different stacks of pieces that look almost-but-not-quite-the-same, and maybe touching up an edge here or there with Crayola Blue Lagoon and red safety scissors.
It’s taking a long time. My “before Christmas” estimate is WAY off. The writing, though, still feels like flying. Blue sky flying, which is the coolest. I figure as long as I can hold onto that, the story will be a-okay…. right?
-D.
revise, revise, revise. Ok, sorry. I was a writing professor for too long:)
LOL! I’m doing quite a lot more composing than revising, these days, but I’ll call it one of three, anyway ;-)
You are cool, now back to your puzzle.. c
I’m on it, c. Thank you!
Good Girl, you are our star! c
Yup. The story will be a-okay.
So crayolas are okay to use for blue-pencilling?
lol Yeah, they work :-)
Keep up the good work! Yes, we had a Compaq and dot-matrix printer too, back in the day. (I was the mom.) You could get them at Walmart. You had to design your own programs, though, or get something like a game or a word-processor program on a little do-ma-jiggy that you plugged into a slot on the side (or was it in back?). Sort of the ancient equivalent of a programmed flash-drive.
Thanks, Jo Anne. There weren’t Wal-Mart stores in Canada at that time (so, basically, a hundred years ago). I think mum bought that PC at a HUGELY inflated rate at the sole and singular computer shop in town, and it was our third or fourth system, since memory upgrades and processor speeds meant buying a whole new box to our uneducated wallets. The first one was a Commodore VIC-20 into which you had to code C-Basic to get it to do anything, and it had a massive floppy drive and a cartridge slot for playing Asteroids =D
So that’s how you writers do it. Well golly gee!
Golly gee? Hahaha! Yeah, I don’t really know how writers do it, but so far this way is working for me :-)