How I learned not to apologise

 

Summary for busy people who can't be bothered to read it all: 

 

Do not apologise for knowing something others don't. Do not apologise for being right, ever! 

 

I was nine years old when my dad told me to stop apologising for being right.

It wasn't really something easy but it happened fast because I was a little girl and I always did what my daddy told me. 

I was raised in a catholic school. For those of you who don't know what a French Catholic school is like, I'm not going to get into details here, I just want to talk about the general issue of apologizing to give you some context.

The teaching about apology and forgiveness goes like this:

If someone does something bad to you, they are forced to apologise generally by a teacher and you are supposed to forgive them. The apology prevents the child from being punished because nothing is wrong if they are forgiven. The thing is apologies aren't genuine and the forgiveness is forced too, since not saying “I forgive you” would get you punished.

At home, it was the same. My mother would enforce the rules and if my brother was miss-behaving toward me, I always had to forgive him. I probably had to apologise too from time to time though I would like to pretend I didn't. 

I was at school and it was time for one of my parents to come pick me up for lunch. I was waiting in the recess area. I don't remember exactly how the conversation came about but I know we were discussing birthdays. I was born on the 17^th and another girl was also born on the 17^th even though months apart. She decided that it was unacceptable.

She told me I couldn't be born on the 17^th because she was.

I said that several babies could be born on the same day, like twins and that we weren't even born on the same month.

“But 17 is my number”, she said, “only I am born on the 17^th, you are not.”

 

“But I am,” I answered.

Then three of her friends came over and they started to tell me how impossible that was, that everyone had a different number for their birthday and that mine couldn't be 17 since it was her number.

And here I was. “I'm sorry, I didn't do it on purpose but I was born on the 17^th too. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” And of course I started crying out of frustration because I knew my birthday for a fact but I had four people in front of me telling be I was wrong. I think I was really starting to doubt myself.

Then my father arrived and of course the other girls ran away, can't be caught making someone cry in front of a parent, really. But he had heard parts of the conversation. Normally, he would have given me a hug and told me not to cry that it was ok, but this time he didn't.

Instead he said:

“Why are you crying?”

I was crying so hard that I couldn't even answer.

He lowered himself down to be at eye level and said.

“You know when your birthday is, they don't. Don't ever apologise for knowing something others don't, don't ever apologise for being right!”

I nodded.

“And stop crying now.”

It was a bit harsh.

He took my hand as usual and we left the place. It was weird. I felt like I had just being scold for doing nothing wrong and at the same time I started to understand something else, something that would make me grow into who I am today. Someone that he trusted to actually see the truth and stand up for it. Someone who would see right from wrong and make the right decision. Someone who wasn't supposed to cry “like a girl” but could actually be strong.

 When I went back to school that afternoon and we did the calendar, I was asked for my birthday.

“November 17^th” I said, and it felt so right to me that nobody dared to say otherwise. 

 

So that's my little story. I don't believe in apologies for different reasons linked to my upbringing. Instead I believe in not doing shit that hurts other people.

In the context of what has been going on lately and the women who have been forced to apologise just for daring to say the truth about the lived reality of women, women's right and women's biology, I would like to tell every women out there, lowering myself to get to eye level, or more likely tiptoeing since I'm quite small:

      Do not apologise for knowing something others don't. 

Do not apologise for being right ever!

 

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January Challenges!

"But Linda, Linda, Linda! You haven't told us what are your new year resolutions and you haven't told us what you are going to do this month?" 

Yes, that's true that not long ago I started to every month with telling the challenges I wanted to accomplish but it hasn't been always like that and I didn't notice that I had to do it but I guess people got somehow used to it. 

So here we go again!

I don't believe in New Years Resolutions! 

The main reason is that probably everyone who took a New Year Resolution already gave it up by about NOW. I mean it's 10th of January and there is the "it's cold outside, I'll do it tomorrow factor." I know that because it's snowing in Sendai and I'm still walking home but that's only because I'm pretty good at self herding even if that's not so good for me. 

The second reason is that people are taking the same resolution every year expecting to obtain a different result without thinking that if it didn't work last year there is no way that it's going to work this year either, I don't know why they start believing that this year is so different just because it's first of January. If they actually really wanted to do something they wouldn't need to wait for the first of January to be convenient to start it, they would just need to start it whenever they think of it. 

The third reason is that New Year Resolutions are generally extremely poorly expressed and lead to being overwhelmed without even starting to work on anything. Like "This year, I'll get fit" but you have no idea about which new diet to start on or what type of exercise you like, or "I'm going to write a book or learn a language" without first planning the time for it during your busy day.

But I guess that's just me being annoyed with people wanting things and never putting the efforts into it and that's worse in January  because of the New Year Resolutions. 

So the challenge for January!

1)I'm up again for the Read More Or Die challenge but this time in 3 languages as I want to maintain my knowledge in German and Swedish a little bit better. 

I'm also reading books in French to help be get better at translating my blog post (and maybe later books) into French.

2)I'm still editing Harajuku Kiss which is getting closer to something good everyday.

3)I'm still writing Blue Angel even though I haven't joined Janowrimo because I was away at the beginning of January then didn't bother. (New part of Blue Angel coming soon.) 

 

4) I joined #fitbit2014 challenge and have a lot more than the 12k steps needed to success for this week. (Monday: 13752, Tuesday: 13678, Wednesday: 14075, Thursday: 14780)

Conclusion is: I rather "do" that awesome thing than tell people that "I'm gonna do it."

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Japan, Okinawa: First time under the sea... at fish depth

 

So of course diving in the swimming pool was fun but that's not really what I meant by diving, I could reach the bottom without equipments. So the next day we started up again, early, to go to Sunabe Wall -1, passed on out gear and went for our first exploration of the under water world. 

During this practice which took three dives and 1hour 55 minutes under water, we practice the mouth piece recovery and removing water out of our mask. Removing my mask was really hell. Not because I couldn't do it properly but because my eyes stayed painful for a bit after that and I always seem to have salty water in my nose for some reasons. It got better with further dives. 

I can totally float without problem and I needed 8 kilos weigh on my weight belt and buoyancy jacket pockets to be able to sink. I had no problem getting inside the water but getting out was another story, I always slipped on the rocks and felt unable to stand, hopefully my wet suit protected me from cuts and injuries. Walking out made me feel really heavy.

Inside of the water we were feeling alright but outside was a little bit cold so we had hot water to wet and warm ourselves up.

One of my question was: Can I really see fishes if I go dive so close to the shore? 

The answer is: Yes, definitely, a hell lot of them, they are either really cute and friendly because they are used to being fed by the people doing introduction diving to attract them for a picture, or shy and hiding.

I'll introduce you to the fishes later, I need to find some picture on the web because I didn't have a camera that goes under water. Travel table of content

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Japan, Okinawa: Let's start diving

One of the reason I went to Okinawa, as I said in the introduction post, is that I wanted to learn to dive. Therefore, I registered to the NAUI diving course with a Okinawan school called Reef Encounter for Open Water and Advance Diving courses. They were the cheapest and they are really good. Our instructor spent 800 hours under water in the last year and a half which is like 1.5 hours under water every day. Depending how deep you go that's about the max you can do, I think. So he really knew what he was talking about. 

The advantage of a NAUI course is that at the opposite of a diving introduction you have more dives, you can swim by yourself and you can also obtain a certificate to be able to dive by yourself by just buying your own material or renting it on diving sites. 

The Open Water course contained 5 dives and the Advance course contained 6 dives. I will let you know about the exercises as we go into this travel series. 

The first day (December 22nd) my boyfriend went to take classes at the school while I stayed sleeping. As I was studying in English and him in Japanese, I had to take the classes online. Later, we had our first encounter with the material composed of the diving suit, booties, a buoyancy jacket, fins, a diving mask, weight belt and of course our octopus piece to be attached to the compressed air tank for a preparation dive in the swimming pool. 

The first swimming pool's water was really cold and I was really scared that it was going to stay that way all the time even if the sea was supposedly warmer. In the first swimming pool, we did some exercises like mouth piece recovery - the mouth piece is the thing in your mouth that you need to have to breath, so you better be good at finding it if it's knocked away from you accidentally- and taking of and putting our mask back. 

Then we went to the second swimming pool which was a little did warmer and a lot deeper (4 meters) and we exercised going down and back to the surface. Going down seems easy, but the deeper you are the faster you sink and that's dangerous for your ear so you have to add some air in your buoyancy vest to be able to sink slowly. Going up is easy too but you need to make sure that the air in your lungs don't expand when the pressure decrease so you need to go back up slowly too (9 meters per minute). 

Anyway, let me tell you one funny thing to finish this post. The harder thing to do in diving, is to put on you diving suit. Travel table of content

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Japan: Flying to Okinawa

My Christmas holidays start today! 

I'm flying early morning to Okinawa where I will be taking diving classes for the first 5 days in Naha then sightseeing in the islands around. Okinawa is a group of island in the very south of Japan. They have a warm humid subtropical climate. The temperature down there is around 20℃ at the moment and the temperature of the water is supposed to be higher, that's going to be a lot of fun.

I already started to study diving theory with the workbook and textbook and finished all the necessary quizzes on the e-learning website. I always wanted to learn how to dive and Okinawa seems like a great place to start. I feel a bit scared by the amount of material to remember and by the amount of risk when diving if you don't do it properly but I'm ready to learn step by step to handle the equipment and to breathe underwater. I think one of the challenge is going to be never to hold my breath.

If everything goes as planed I'll go to Iriomote island, Miyako island and Kume island to do some sightseeing, after the diving classes. I want to go to the beach and take a boat on the river in the jungle. I'm really excited about it. After the snow in Sendai few days ago, it will be a nice change to feel the summer again.
Travel table of content

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Learning to say NO!

Last night I got a little bit overwhelmed and posted the following facebook status and I don't regret because it's all absolutely true. Maybe I have issues.

I'm NOT doing ANYTHING for ANYONE:
1) No free dolls (they are called amigurumi by the way and they are crochet not knitted but whatever) You want some get to my etsy it's here for that!
2) No reading your first draft cause it's SO GOOOD!!!! even when you have typos in the goddam title.
3) Not editing anything, yes, not even a five lines abstract. I know the first prompt is SO GOOOD!!!! that I know how to do it, which doesn't mean I'll do it for you. The prompt is there for a reason, use it!
4) I'm not giving my books for free, you want a free book that you won't read or won't even say thanks for ask someone else.
5) I'm not checking your damn fortran code for you either. You want to debug just do it yourself. And I'm not reading your equations, you can't derive, not my problem.

I'm so fucking tired of people continuously asking things from me. Linda is so nice she's gonna do it so I don't have to make a little effort.

Because I can do things well doesn't mean that I have to do them for everybody for the sake of friendship!

Also check the last time you did something for me... oh never and why? Because you don't know how to knit and you are too busy with your code to look at mine and you don't write books. Then what?

Yes, I'm a bad friend and guess what, I don't care! You heard me, I don't fucking care. All you are trying to do by saying that is to make me feel guilty for not saying yes at everything you ask from me. Now who is the bad person.
Yes, I'm a selfish bitch and I didn't need to take it that way for you just asking a little thing from me. Well I guess if the thing is so little you don't really need it anyway.

My time is precious, you want some of it, earn it!

I feel so overwhelmed by my own overly high expectation for myself and at time my own to do list. I don't need to have a bunch of people coming around and asking me for stuff, generally extremely time costly stuff for me, but free for them and expecting stuff from me.

I have a tendency to always say yes. If I do it, it's faster, it's better and it makes everyone happy.

Well, everyone but me.

I spent so much time doing stuff for other people just because they asked that I could probably have taken care of most of my delayed stuff by now and this is frightening. I'm tired to go on a guild trip every time the word NO crosses my lips or get out of my finger tips. If I have the skills, it's because it took me a long time to acquire them so why do these people believe that they can just go asking me to do something for them when they are themselves not ready to make the effort? The more I think about it, the more I find it absolutely ridiculous. Why are people expecting others to give them stuff, to give their time when they are just sitting on their asses watching TV? Do restaurant give you food for free? Do hairdresser cut your hair for free? Then why expecting from your friends and family to give you something they work hard for, without even considering giving something in return? 

Love and friendship don't mean that people have to suck up all the energy and all the goodness out of someone else. 

Stop making people feel like they are bad just for saying NO. Don't you yourself want to say no too, sometimes? Actually, the more I think about it the more I realized that the people around me asking things and making a fuss when I occasionally say NO are the one who never ever say yes.

Why is there always a but when someone says NO?

1) But it will only takes you 5 minutes.

2) But I don't know how to do it myself.

3) But if you asked me to do it I would.

One of the best counter attack that was use against me for saying NO was people getting mad:
"Then I won't ask you anything ever again."
In which case, I ended up having to explain that if I said no now, I didn't mean that I wouldn't do anything at all and the longer the person was keeping the attitude, the more I would sink and just ending up feeling depressed and saying yes for the sake of being left alone and the person not even being happy about my effort because I should have said yes directly. 

Then saying no is the best for me and even then I still feel pretty bad, which I shouldn't, but it's like there is no escaping it. And when I feel that way I just listen to the same Korean song again and again and again. And I really wished I could yell/sing it but right now I can't.

This is madness.
So NO, NO, NO and if you're not happy about it, it's not my problem.

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Linear writer or Parallel writer

For some times now I have been thinking a lot about the shapes my stories are taking.

I'm not sure if there are already terms for what I'm going to describe so let me start by explaining what I mean by linear writer and parallel writer.

A linear writer takes a character from A to Z and never leave her/him, or goes with this character all the way through time -with flashbacks in thoughts even though the flashbacks might mean that it's not really linear. See how I'm even confused about it.  

I always considered myself a linear writer. But come to think of it even in Demon Soul there are always some parts where I'm not only with Brownie. For example during Sahel's training in the Demon World. In that case, the story is linear in time only, despite the background flashbacks in Brownie's thoughts.

My only story that would be purely linear is then Rainbow Catcher and I can tell you that sticking with Jason was so hellish that I actually had two characters around him to spice things up a bit and it took me a lot longer to write with a big break. Then again, I don't know how the entire linear writing will survive the multiple editing.

The thing that made me believe I was a linear writer is more how I always started my stories, Demon Soul, Attic Mirror, Demon and Fairy, Rainbow Catcher, Vampire heart... with only one character to follow and then things changed a bit as the story developed but probably not to much, after all, I'm a planner. 

In Demon and Fairy, the story would have been completely linear (and it was) if I didn't add the Kelpie story line in part 2. This story line is only really useful for the reader when they reach my current WIP Blue Angel so it took me a long time to decide if I wanted to include it or not in full. 

What I like in linear writing is the intimacy. You get to know the character very well because they are all you see, this is sometimes difficult to handle as a writer because it doesn't leave any space for inconsistencies in the character's timeline or behavior, if you want them to do something special out of their usual behavior, you need to give them a special trigger related to something that happened in their past. Of course, ideally you need that for every characters, but it's more complex when the number of characters is reduced. 

I especially like this complexity in the character development in Vampire Heart because I think it works pretty well with the first person narrative, even if I escape in the third person with another character from time to time. It allows me to give Viorel so many layers of personality that it even makes me confused at time.

In Harajuku Kiss, I write in third person and the linearity in this point of view helps me detached a bit from the main character to emphasize how depressed she is and how the one particular event of the story can completely shift her state of mine and her life.
I think I like to have my reader feel the same way the main character does.

In Demon and Fairy, the linearity at the beginning of the novel allows the reader to feel the Chaos in Seti's head as something omnipresent that they don't fully understand, it's oppressing and you can't help but want to get ride of it. My only fear is that the reader might be annoyed enough by it to stop reading.

Then a parallel writer is a writer who starts the novel with different story lines which join each other at some point or at the conclusion where everything fixes itself, or a writer who writes a story where the time line is a mix of present, past, future in any order you would like. 

The only problem with me calling it parallel is that parallel lines are not supposed to join, ever, but then in a story that would be pretty weird.

I think I'm starting to be parallel writer. It started with Demon World. I had three story lines going on. And I have Brownie and Sahel's minds jump from past life to past life multiple time leading to no linearity in time. I still need to edit this part to make sure that it's blurry enough and still clear enough. It's something nice to balance and I really enjoyed this part. It gave my characters some new dimensions as their souls travel back in time.

Now, in Blue Angel, I have five story lines as you might have noticed. I go from one to the other in order. At first, I thought the story lines belonged to particular characters but when Isakael joined Sahel and the other by going home, one story line was close but a new story line opened in the Angel World with Ezechial so maybe they belong to places.
This allowed me to give a new dimension to the story by developing my villain. In the previous novel, the villains seem under developed as we spend so much time with the protagonists. This will be fixed as the villains become more and more prominent in the story because the protagonists discover their purposes.

I really enjoy the mystery part in parallel writing. When you go from one group of characters to another, there is always something in me that wants to know what will happen to the previous groups of characters. It also gives a rather epic dimension to the story with a lot of things happening and allows me to create a world more complete and complex. It also let me play with a lot of characters, it's like having many friends.

So linear or parallel? How do you like your stories? How do you like your writing? Let me know!

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Telling a story: The so called Head-hopping

The more I learn about writing, the more I dislike the rules people are giving. One of the reason why I dislike those rules is that they are often contradictory from one writer to another, confusing and at best ready to be broken.

I want to talk about something that a lot of writers look upon with disgust while others, like me, like to embrace it, to give another dimension to the story. I'm going to talk about "head-hopping."

First let me define what is Head-hopping

When writing a story, writers chose a point of view to tell it. It can be the first person, the third person restricted to a character or the third person omniscient or what we would call head-hopping. Head-hopping, the topic of today consist in changing point of view to feed the need of your story.
Choosing a point of view is a very important step when deciding to write a story and so is changing it during the story.

The main complains of the one who don't like "head-hopping" are as follows,



1) It's confusing
 2) You don't know in who's head you are
 3) You need to share too many feelings
 4) The reader can't relate to the character
 5) The reader wont care/bond about the characters

If those concerns are louable and might make sense, it is very unclear what the experience of the reader will actually be like with or without head-hopping.

Image from Hyberbole and a Half

As a reader I have to say that I personally don't stop at every sentence to ask myself in which character's head I am and what is the point of view. I believe that the writer is actually giving me the information for a reason, that's his job to analyse, not mine. For a personal experience, I have to say that there is only one time when the change of point of view actually annoyed me. It was in "Red Mars", I read about 60 pages in mostly Maya's point of view and at the next chapter it changes suddenly to Nadia's point of view, while calling her "she" first for a while. At that time I truly believed that I was still with Maya. I remember asking myself where the hell is Maya, who is that. I closed the book and gave myself few days to get back. That kind of change of POV is apparently acceptable because it's "clear", well I would have highly prefered a smooth transition even if I got used to Nadia and maybe even liked her better as her personality is closer to mine. 

Here are the reason why I like the "head-hopping."

 1) More flexibility: when dealing with a group of character, it's very easy to have from time to time a character with a more appropriate POV. It is way more efficient to tell epic stories with complicated plots and subplots involving a lot of characters. (You must remember that I like having a lot of characters in my stories.)

Image from Hyberbole and a Half

 2) Staying with the action even when a character leaves: You can look at it in the same way you would have a conversation with several people but at some point the conversation split in two groups and you need to decide which one to follow. I
 3) Your characters are talking to you for a reason: Writers often say that the characters are talking to them. If a character tells you how he feels at a particular moment maybe it's a good idea to give him/her some attention.
 4) It makes the narrator more reliable. Being with only one character at a time of intense emotion is very difficult for the reader as well as because as a person they are able to catch the emotions of others. By letting the point of view change you give your reader a more accurate version of what everyone feels.
 5) The thoughts verb use against head-hopping. Thought verbs are something that I tend to avoid because it falls in the category of telling instead of showing.  is really bad because it makes your character do assumption on others behavior and mislead the reader, it makes the narrator unreliable. It gives him a self centered personality like everything is about him.

Here are few posts by others about change of POV:

3 Tips for Using Mulitple Point of View Characters
The Rules of Writing: Switching POV, or “Head-Hopping”
Head hopping done right

What Makes Omniscient POV Different from Head-Hopping?

 These are of course no restrictive. 

Just a warning when you read blog posts with rules, the writers tend to write the example with the broken rules badly so that it actually defies the point of the all post in my opinion. 

Conclusion

The only thing I would recommend if you are confused about your writing point of view and if you are doing it "right" is to grab few of your favorite novels and see how they do it in there. Frank Herbert, Hemingway and Stephen King can go with Head-hopping, well I think I'm good to stick with it.

 

   

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Editing tips 2: Spotting plot's holes

As I have been doing a lot of editing lately I decided to save the way I did it as blog post tips. The first tips was on copy editing which is the last part of your edit. Today, I want to talk more about developmental editing, and the first thing I always look at is the plot. Can it stand by itself or are things missing?

Here is my way of finding the plot's holes and make sure that the story flows from one point to the others with nothing missing. 

1) Read through your manuscript and summarize what happens in every chapters.

Reading through the manuscript is really important, I know too many people who just start on fixing grammar as soon as they are finished with the draft. I consider it really bad for several reasons:

1) You are beating yourself up for a draft badly written. Better a finished draft poorly written than no draft at all.

2) Your story needs to stand up before you go into details. What's the point of creating a perfect paragraph that will be cut out of the story. It's just a waste of your time and energy which would be better focused elsewhere. 

3) You need to know your story before starting to change it. I generally let my draft rest for few months, before even looking at them while working on something else. This allows me to disconnect the emotional bound with my story and characters. It is always said that writers are too close to their story to properly edit it, you need to forget it and to relearn it to be efficient. 

Summarizing the chapters will help you to see the big picture. If you are like me and don't have chapters find key points, those can be change of location, new characters arriving....
If there is a part missing in the story it will automatically when the chapter summaries don't make a complete and clear story line. At that stage, you are still working a rough draft so feel the blanks however you please as long as you get a clear and complete pictures. It is the time when you should add more and forget about removing. The only reason to remove anything at this stage is when one chapter clearly stands out of the line and can be seen as the story going crazy where is shouldn't have gone before getting back on track. Don't erase it, copy it in your cut out file.

2) Have a read through your chapters and summarize what happens in every paragraphs and Answer the plot questions

Once you are done and satisfied with the big picture of your novel, go through it one more time summarizing each paragraphs.
Summarizing the paragraphs will give you a better picture of what is going on in each chapter and spot inconsistencies. (more of that in another post)
Here are some of the plot questions I use, and examples from Demon and Fairy's opening chapter.

1) What happens here?
This should be the main line of your paragraph summary.
 Seti is flying to the beach.

2) Why it happens?
There is a reason for everything, if you can't find it go back to the previous paragraphs, if it's still not there either you are introducing something new which will require an explanation now or later (clues) or the paragraph is unnecessary and need to be taken out. (Don't erase it, copy it in your cut out file.)
Seti has a head ache and looking at Kallisto is the only thing making it disappear. 

3) Who is here and why?

You can have one or more characters in the story they all have a reason to be there.
I'm going to use a controversial example here because that's a part the critique thought unnecessary.
Who : Seti, in Seti's thoughts Kallisto and Kelpie
Why : Seti is on the beach because of the headache.
          Kallisto is in Seti's thoughts because he wanted her to cure his headache.
           Kelpie is in Seti's thoughts because it shows what kind of relationship Seti doesn't have and longs for. It also introduces the surrounding of Kallisto and shows what kind of person she is.

4) Does it follows what happens in the previous paragraphs?
Sometimes you have so many things happening that you need to go back far or look further. If you are writing in several characters point of view for example in different chapters, go back where you left them. If you are in the middle of the action make sure it follows through. If you can't find any relations get that part the cut out file.
Seti is flying to the beach to see Kallisto  → She is not there →  He tries to think about her to feel better → It doesn't work so he goes home....
Make sure everything follows each other logically.

5) Can this be listed as a clue?
What I call clues are important part of the stories which are lightly mentioned, several time through the beginning and developed later on. If it keeps the reader hanging for more wondering what is going on I call them strong clues. They are generally given as things happening without the main character noticing or in the thoughts of another character.
Without a last look, he flew away and didn’t notice the other demon who had just landed in the garden of her house and flew high speed through one of the second floor bedroom’s window. 
If they are meant to be forgotten, I call them subtle clues. These are the clues that the readers will forget or disregard a detail and have a Ah-moment later on as the clue take it's importance. "I should have known that!!"
Kallisto gives fairy powder to Seti. (This is even a hidden clue.)
It is important to spot your clues to remember that you have to use them later, no point of having a clue that is never used it's just unnerving. Remember, everything happens for a reason.

3) Fill the blanks by adding paragraphs or chapters to link them together.

As much as you need to cut out the unnecessary, illogical paragraphs but it is likely that you will have missing parts. Generally I have something like 10000 to 20000 words added and deleted so the length of my novel doesn't change much but the content does.
If one paragraph fits with what comes next, but not with what happens before, you need to fill the bank.
Create a chain of events from where you are at to where you need to go next, and write your story for those. It can be as short as a linking sentence or as long as a chapter.
In the case of a sentence it is easily done.
In the case of a full chapter, you need to see if the part you are trying to link your beginning to really follows the story, and you need think a bit more carefully before doing it, no need to link something to a paragraph which doesn't lead anywhere.
But I trust you on taking the right option for your story. Writing is never lost, it always fit in the cut out files and can be used for other purpose later, at worse it helps you learn how to be a better writer.

How do you edit your stories? How do you find your plot holes and fix them? I hope you'll find something helpful here and let me know if I miss something.

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Editing tips 1: Using a word list

I know that I'm supposed to be sharing an update on the reading challenge today but seeing that my improvements are inexistent since last time (I even forgot my current book at my boyfriend's last week-end) I thought that I might as well talk about something more entertaining. I'll definitely read those 1200 pages but this month doesn't seem anymore like the best time to do it.

 

Anyway as I have been doing a lot of editing in the past few weeks (months?) so let's talk about a tool that I particularly like which is the use of a word list.

When I write my drafts, all I care about is to get the story from point A to point Z and to get the big picture. As you might have noticed, I don't care about grammar, or spelling, style or vocabulary, I just write whatever comes to my mind, but this is another tip which I might or not discuss later. The great thing about writing this way is that it gives me a story. The not-so-great thing is that it's full of mistakes, misspelling, grammar errors and so on. Something about my writing is that if I do something wrong I will almost have it consistently wrong which leaded me to create my word list tool.

The word list tool is used mainly for copy editing but can be used early on in the draft just to roughly fix things if you find them to distracting to concentrate on plot and characters. It allows you to get your most common errors fixed. Let see how it works.

1) Create your word list: what words should you put in your word lists?

I'm going to give you a list of what kind of words works in my case for the type of mistakes I make:

1) Auxiliary verbs (Would, should, could.... ): I tend to get my tenses wrong at time so I make sure what follows my auxiliary verb is a verb stem. 

2) To have and to be in all forms: Here again I need to fix my tenses.

3) ing: that's not a word, just verb ending but it still help me fix my tenses.

4) Verbs that I consistently miss used: My main bother at the moment is to lie, I have this page constantly open and check it every time. 

5) Nouns I constantly misspell: rhythm, words differing from French spelling by one letter.

6) Words close in spelling: thoughts, thought, though...

7) Words close in sound: ear, hear, here...

8) Characters names: I need to make sure they are always capitalized.

9) Words requiring particular font, or capitalization in the story: cities, countries, particular location

10) Specific words (group of words) created for the story.

11) Words appearing often.

 

You can easily find words to add to your word list by reading you novel, mostly every thing I got wrong once get in the word list. For Demon and Fairy I have currently 74 words. I had 58 earlier on when I used the word list on the text for the first time, but new edits and multiple reads through of the novel increased the list a bit.

2) Use the word list.

Search every word one by one through the entire novel, read the sentence they are in and fix it. I generally only make grammar and spelling changes this way. As it's a very selective method and other type of changes might not fit in the global picture anymore so be careful and use it discriminatingly. 

It can be really fastidious at time and you don't see the page number decrease as you do with normal editing, cross out your words every time you're done with one. It will give you a sense of progress. 

3) The advantages of using a word list.

There are several advantages of using this method, let me give you some of them:

It breaks the narrative. When editing it is very easy to be caught up in the story leading to avoid reading every words and spotting mistakes. Reading sentences instead of paragraphs help to make sure that you catch everything more easily.

It's fast. Seeing that I still find mistakes after 12 or more reads spotting where they are is definitely a must to same my time.

It's consistent. It allows you to fix the same problem all over the novel instead of jumping from one to the other like a normal read through would making the fixing more efficient as you don't have to go back and forth checking how to do it. 

It helps spotting repetitions. Buy this method you will see how many occurrence of the words there is so you can decide if it's too few or too many. 

It covers most of your novel. If you check most of your verbs you'll be checking most of the sentences in your novel, just not in sequential order.

It gives you confidence. If you spot mistakes every time you read your novel it can be very frustrating and you can feel that it will never be done. I generally stop to copy edit when I can read the entire novel without finding more than three mistakes. (I still have reader pointing some at me at times) This method help you make sure than all those hot spots or mistakes nests are actually mistakes free. I can assure you that it feels incredibly good.

 

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