ABC Writing Prompt

Found a neat writing prompt and I thought I'd give it a try. The rules are you use the alphabet to make a list of advice. So without further ado, my 26 tidbits of life advice:

World's Worst Edited Novel

World's worst edited book. If you have ever wanted to read the world's worst edited book, look no further than a book that was edited by its own author. You will have to resist screaming at misplaced commas, dangling participles, run ons, fragments, misspellings, and much worse. It is a horror story without even having an ounce of blood within its pages.

My novel, Child of Galina, is one of these lucky books that can be called the worst, merely because I was too poor and too stubborn at the time of self-publishing to have someone else do the editing work for me. I decided that I could do it. Surely, I, the self same young woman who passed all her English, grammar, and editing classes with As and would have had better grades had the grading scale invented a new letter to signify those with above par skills and shining red pens ready to mar the words of her fellow peers' hard work and writings.

But alas, when you are editing your own, you only see the things that are meant to be there, you don't notice the misplaced comma that was added when you were up at 3:00 a.m. stale coffee breath steaming up the laptop screen when that one scene just had to be finished before your brain would let you rest, get some sleep, oh sleep, how the bed called you, but your brain would.not.shut.UP! 3:00 a.m. writings result in a lot,  and I mean A LOT of grammar mistakes. And you wont' see them because this book is your beautiful baby that you have carried with you for x amount of years while you grew it and cultured it, and even allowed it a little room to play without restrictions upon the laws of the world that it was set in. Some of those moments were left unrecorded and that is for the better, as the public, who is already rejecting the fact that your book is the worst edited in the world, would truly reject those playful moments when your story turned upon itself and you reached in straightened things out and hoped no one else would know for the better.

So if you enjoy mocking misplaced commas and the occasional your instead of you're, then you should check out my book, Child of Galina, the story comes from my heart, the editing, well not so much.

On Editing Older Writings

Child of Galina was very difficult for me to edit. C.o.G. was first completed in 2006. The first time I edited this novel a year was spent on it. Scenes were added, sentences (and even paragraphs) cut. Descriptions were gone over with a fine tooth comb. Everything was saved to my laptop and backed up on a flash drive.

I was finally finished and started sending C.o.G. out to publishers.

A few months later my laptop crashed in a MAJOR way. Even the operating system was gone, not to mention my files, photos...everything. But that was okay, most of that stuff was on my flash drive in my desk. No worries.

I worked on my laptop, re-installing everything I needed. Now to get my flash drive and open up my files and re-save them to the ol' un-trusty laptop. I open the desk drawer that I keep the flash drive in and it isn't there. I search the other drawers, no dice. I search my purses, laptop case, dresser drawers, end tables, night stands, under the couch cushions, everything in that house was turned upside down.

I never did find the flash drive, and it's whereabouts are still a mystery 7 years later. I did, however, find the first rough draft of Child of Galina. I put it away, heartbroken that over an entire year's worth of work was gone.

2013 arrived. Many, many things had changed in my life since I lost the final version of C.o.G. in 2007. I was in a  better place physically and emotionally. I'd moved home, gotten a divorce, went a little wild, got a job, calmed down, started dating, went back to college, changed jobs, got engaged, graduated college, got a house, got married, new job started stressing me out and killing my soul so at night when insomnia haunted me, I edited the original rough draft of Child of Galina, and there waiting for me were memories of some of the things i'd gone through that nearly broke me and the reasons why coming back home had saved my life.

Editing C.o.G. from the viewpoint of having come through it all was much more difficult than when I edited it the first time. Some things were lost in translation as a different person was editing the novel than the person who had written it.

Child of Galina will always be where I truly started as a writer, but I have more stories in me, some that I'm working on right now and I hope to do justice to my new stories, better than I was able to give to C.o.G.