Day 336: Self-editing in 5-minute chunks
I actually spent most of yesterday doing editing for the Japanese version of The Spinster's Christmas. After the experience working on the Japanese version of Sushi for One of working with a proofreader who's more knowledgable about standard Japanese publications, I decided to revise The Spinster's Christmas in the same way. Previously, I asked my translator to include the furigana for all the kanji in the manuscript, but now I'm removing all furigana below grade 7. I'm also redoing the formatting of the print version.
It's taking a long time to remove the furigana since I don't read Japanese very well, and so I have to go through each kanji one by one to search for each occurrence in the manuscript. Unfortunately I can't just do a Find and Replace All because that won't work to remove the furigana, and I have to check each word manually since some words that are a combination of lower grade and higher grade kanji retain their furigana. I only did 3 kanji yesterday and it took almost 4 hours. Then I worked on the formatting a little, but that only took 30-40 minutes.
I also managed to do a bit of more detailed editing of Lady Wynwood's Spies, volume 1: Archer. I found myself skimming a bit, which I shouldn't be surprised about since I hate self-editing so much. But that also concerns me since I'm not sure I'm doing as good a job as I want to.
It made me wonder if doing the editing in small 5-minute chunks might be a better way to go about doing it, because I'm less likely to get lazy and start skimming if I've only been doing the self-editing for 5 minutes. On Saturday I'd been thinking I should prioritize doing the Lady Wynwood editing over the Regency nonfiction reading during the 5-minute breaks, so I can try that today and see. I'll continue doing the 25-minute Pomodoros since that seemed to work well on Saturday.
And at the end of the day yesterday, I spent a couple hours working on my fantasy serial novel. I didn't intend to--I watched an anime and then got a story inspiration that would work in my fantasy world, so I wrote it down.
I don't know if it's just because it's new and shiny, but I really love this new fantasy world. It's mostly world building at this point, and I'm also writing down potential storylines, all of which are aimed more toward a serial novel format rather than a regular book.
I would have thought that it would be difficult for me to switch mindset from the Hawaii book to the fantasy book, but it hasn't been hard at all. Even yesterday, I worked on the editing for the Regency novel, but it wasn't hard to switch to brainstorming for the fantasy serial novel. That might be because my fantasy world has some modern elements as well as some historical elements (plus, you know, magic), so it's not as big a leap into a different genre as it might otherwise be.
Because the switch wasn't very difficult, it made me wonder if I might actually be able to write 1000 words of a serial fantasy novel each week. It was just a wild idea that kind of flew by, but I'll work on finishing the world building and story plotting, and then maybe I'll see. The plotting itself might take a few months, since I'm only working on the fantasy whenever I have a free hour or two, and that's usually at the end of the day when I'm tired, so I don't do much.
I'm almost done with the current scene of the Hawaii book, and then I only have two more scenes to go. However, I need to first do a significant revision of an earlier scene, and then I'll be able to finish writing the ending of the current scene.
Unfortunately I woke up with a headache. I took medicine, so it's a little better, but the other medicine I took is going to be slow to kick in. I'm going to try to work through the pain right now since otherwise, I feel okay (my IBS is not bothering me right now) and since I'm so close to finishing the book, I really want to finish it soon.
***
I actually did find myself focusing better when I did the Regency self-editing in short 5-minute chunks. I felt like I was editing much more slowly than yesterday, and so I could see the issues in the sentences better.
However, I also found it hard to switch genres from contemporary, to Regency, to contemporary again. I don't think it'll be a problem when I start work on the next Lady Wynwood's Spies book, but for now I think I'll skip the editing until this book is done.
***
I'm having some issues focusing today because my headache just won't go away. Also, the scene is giving me problems. It's a very emotional scene, which takes me longer to do. Also, I think this is the same scene that was giving me problems a few days ago, so maybe it's just the scene?
I wanted to finish editing that scene today, but my headache is making it difficult. I think I'll stop for today and pick it up tomorrow. I'm almost done editing it, only one small section to go.
Outlining: time spent: 0
Blocking: time spent: 0
Editing: Time spent: 3 hours, 15 minutes (Hawaii book), 36 minutes (Lady Wynwood's Spies 1)
Writing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Total number of words: 0
Writing: Overall writing speed: n/a
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 47 minutes
My takeaway for today: Self-editing done in 5-minute chunks might help me not get lazy and start skimming.
My second takeaway for today; Switching between contemporary and Regency genres is difficult, so I'll save the self-editing for after I finish this book.
It's taking a long time to remove the furigana since I don't read Japanese very well, and so I have to go through each kanji one by one to search for each occurrence in the manuscript. Unfortunately I can't just do a Find and Replace All because that won't work to remove the furigana, and I have to check each word manually since some words that are a combination of lower grade and higher grade kanji retain their furigana. I only did 3 kanji yesterday and it took almost 4 hours. Then I worked on the formatting a little, but that only took 30-40 minutes.
I also managed to do a bit of more detailed editing of Lady Wynwood's Spies, volume 1: Archer. I found myself skimming a bit, which I shouldn't be surprised about since I hate self-editing so much. But that also concerns me since I'm not sure I'm doing as good a job as I want to.
It made me wonder if doing the editing in small 5-minute chunks might be a better way to go about doing it, because I'm less likely to get lazy and start skimming if I've only been doing the self-editing for 5 minutes. On Saturday I'd been thinking I should prioritize doing the Lady Wynwood editing over the Regency nonfiction reading during the 5-minute breaks, so I can try that today and see. I'll continue doing the 25-minute Pomodoros since that seemed to work well on Saturday.
And at the end of the day yesterday, I spent a couple hours working on my fantasy serial novel. I didn't intend to--I watched an anime and then got a story inspiration that would work in my fantasy world, so I wrote it down.
I don't know if it's just because it's new and shiny, but I really love this new fantasy world. It's mostly world building at this point, and I'm also writing down potential storylines, all of which are aimed more toward a serial novel format rather than a regular book.
I would have thought that it would be difficult for me to switch mindset from the Hawaii book to the fantasy book, but it hasn't been hard at all. Even yesterday, I worked on the editing for the Regency novel, but it wasn't hard to switch to brainstorming for the fantasy serial novel. That might be because my fantasy world has some modern elements as well as some historical elements (plus, you know, magic), so it's not as big a leap into a different genre as it might otherwise be.
Because the switch wasn't very difficult, it made me wonder if I might actually be able to write 1000 words of a serial fantasy novel each week. It was just a wild idea that kind of flew by, but I'll work on finishing the world building and story plotting, and then maybe I'll see. The plotting itself might take a few months, since I'm only working on the fantasy whenever I have a free hour or two, and that's usually at the end of the day when I'm tired, so I don't do much.
I'm almost done with the current scene of the Hawaii book, and then I only have two more scenes to go. However, I need to first do a significant revision of an earlier scene, and then I'll be able to finish writing the ending of the current scene.
Unfortunately I woke up with a headache. I took medicine, so it's a little better, but the other medicine I took is going to be slow to kick in. I'm going to try to work through the pain right now since otherwise, I feel okay (my IBS is not bothering me right now) and since I'm so close to finishing the book, I really want to finish it soon.
***
I actually did find myself focusing better when I did the Regency self-editing in short 5-minute chunks. I felt like I was editing much more slowly than yesterday, and so I could see the issues in the sentences better.
However, I also found it hard to switch genres from contemporary, to Regency, to contemporary again. I don't think it'll be a problem when I start work on the next Lady Wynwood's Spies book, but for now I think I'll skip the editing until this book is done.
***
I'm having some issues focusing today because my headache just won't go away. Also, the scene is giving me problems. It's a very emotional scene, which takes me longer to do. Also, I think this is the same scene that was giving me problems a few days ago, so maybe it's just the scene?
I wanted to finish editing that scene today, but my headache is making it difficult. I think I'll stop for today and pick it up tomorrow. I'm almost done editing it, only one small section to go.
Outlining: time spent: 0
Blocking: time spent: 0
Editing: Time spent: 3 hours, 15 minutes (Hawaii book), 36 minutes (Lady Wynwood's Spies 1)
Writing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Total number of words: 0
Writing: Overall writing speed: n/a
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 47 minutes
My takeaway for today: Self-editing done in 5-minute chunks might help me not get lazy and start skimming.
My second takeaway for today; Switching between contemporary and Regency genres is difficult, so I'll save the self-editing for after I finish this book.
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