Thanks to Nathan Bradford and Nicole Palmby, as well as my own beloved husband Nathan, I have undertaken a crazy task that will hopefully make me a better writer and make you, the reader, happier.

I'm so tired. I want to write something different. But I can't. Must...finish...Awakening.

I finished it! Awakening is officially finished. It's not near as long as it needs to be, but that's where editing comes in right?

I have figured it out. The reason we even have the word 'deadline' in our vocabulary is so that you meet it. If you don't get things done on time, you're dead. Hence the word 'deadline'.

It's hard to rewrite something that you've already finished. Especially when you've written it so long ago that you can't honestly remember what it was you had written before.

I finished Legacy in April. It had been hard to write, bogged down with historic fact, with a plot that twisted so much I could hardly keep it straight. My villain wasn't bad enough, my hero was not heroic enough, and the human girl stuck in the middle of the story had too much information for the time period. Did I mention that Ulrich makes his first appearance in the story line in this novel? It's a lot to take in.

I hated every single page of Legacy's first draft. Well, not every single page, but at least the majority of them. So the ability to rewrite the story is a wonderful opportunity for me. I can remake the plot so it actually makes sense and rewrite my villain so he's the horrible bad guy I see in my head. I can make my hero an actual heroic figure. So many things to fix, so little time to do it.

As it stands right now, I won't get to Legacy again until December 1st because of Nanowrimo. I'm currently sitting on page 27 of the draft. It has to be completed and edited by May 21st, 2010 because that's when it's being published. Which means that I have about six months after Nano is over to finish it up. I've never been under that kind of a crunch before. Prophecy was done in January of this year and published in June. Forbidden was finished in July and will be published in about two weeks. That's how I've liked it to be done. But Legacy has thrown a wrench in my works.

We'll have to see if I make my deadline or if it blows up in my face.

I love the friends I have that loved Prophecy enough that they want to beta read (or cold read as I will sometimes call it) for me. Even the ones that are upfront enough to tell me that they want to read the finished product, but really don't want to read the novels until they're finished. It's all helpful. As I stare at the second "first" draft of Legacy, I'm starting to wonder if my beta readers know what they're really getting into.

Yes I know. I said the Fang Marked office would be closed yesterday and today. I still am closed, but it's for a different reason altogether. I thought maybe it was a practical joke on Sunday, but it wasn't.

Legacy isn't finished anymore. The last forty pages crashed and burned with my other computer.

Just when I think I'm not going to be reminded of that horrific mistake, it just keeps coming back to bite me in the butt. All this time I've spent rewriting Awakening, and now the book preceding it isn't done. Fabulous.

When my old computer died, that was bad. This is worse in my mind because I haven't worked on Legacy since April. That was five months ago. I can't for the life of me remember how it ended before. I can't remember anything about it except the relief I felt when it was finished. Now I almost have to start over again on a book due out in seven months because I'm going to have to edit what I have first before I can finish it. Argh.

So, to make a long story short, back your stuff up, always! And back it up in multiple locations. Or you could find yourself in my situation. Trust me, it's not a fun place to be right now either.

I loved a recent post on Coffee Stained Writer (http://coffee-stainedwriter.blogspot.com/) about when a work is finished. Since my internet connection is not allowing me to put what I really think as a comment on her blog, I'm throwing it on here.

How do you really know when a work is finished? It's a long process.

Since I've only published the one novel, I'll talk about my experience with that one. Prophecy was hard to let go of. It was my first novel ever and I felt there was so much more to add. I even wrote 10 pages of useless scene at the end because I couldn't let it go. But finally, I'd told the story and it felt done. Then the edits began.

Before I did my first edit, I finished Forbidden and participated in Nano for the first time. I didn't go back to Prophecy until late December/early January. I couldn't believe the disaster that was my first novel. I pulled about 30 pages out, wrote another 30-40 to replace what was cut, moved scenes around, added new characters, and rewrote the ending. Twice. It was finally done with the first round of edits when my husband said to me "is there anything of the original novel left?". That's when I knew it was time to stop and take a step back.

The last round of edits before publication were done in late April/early May. That was a lot quicker because I just had to make sure it was flowing and the new stuff went with the old stuff. But even when I was sure it was the novel it is today, I didn't want to let it go. The only way I stopped picking at it was the deadline I was under. But I'm glad I didn't pick it apart again because so far, the feedback has been fantastic.

So how do you know when it's really done? I can't describe it academically, but I can tell you that Prophecy was done because it felt done. It was ready. It's like cooking or what I imagine pregnancy would be. When it's done, it's done. The turkey comes out of the oven, the baby is born. There's no more you can do to it.

Forbidden has been editted three times because of computer malfunction. It's getting one more combing out before it's completely ready to go. It just hasn't required as much in the way of revision. Now the prequel, Legacy, I'm scared I'm going to have to rewrite that book from the beginning all over again.

But when it's done, it's done.

Here's how crazy this month is already. And it's only the first.

-I need to finish research for nanowrimo. That means many trips to the library and a lot of time on the internet at Fireworks.
-It's time to finish transcribing a novel for a friend of mine. He wants to be able to release it to family and friends by Christmas and if I don't finish it this month, it won't be ready.
-I have to get ready for the book club meeting October 3rd. I need to go through Prophecy and be prepared to hit various parts of the novel and I have to go through Forbidden and pick out what part is going to be previewed at the meeting.
-I need to finish the revisions on Forbidden and do one more real time edit of it to make sure that the new stuff flows with the rest of the story and clear up any formatting mistakes.
-Hubby and I have to go out and take the pictures for the cover of Forbidden. I want a lot to choose from.
-Awakening needs to start winding down. Deadline to finish it is November 1st so it isn't hanging over my head for nanowrimo.
-Shipping out books to family and friends who wanted copies of Prophecy. I'm so behind!
-I have to get with Hubby and design the logo for Fank Marked since we're using that as my office now and we want to make t-shirts. Yeah, we're weird.

Whatever doesn't get done this month will get crammed into next month. Argh.

So you're thinking about editing your novel huh? That means you need to pat yourself on the back right now because you did the hardest thing a first time author has to do. You finished the first draft. And you thought you were done didn't you? Ha!

Let me just put this out there: the first draft stinks. No one is immune to this. You might think it's a work of literary mastery and it should be published as it is. Trust me, you're wrong. My second novel, Forbidden, was written in 19 days. No, I'm not kidding. I thought it was perfect as it was. But when I sat down to edit, I realized it wasn't. Granted, it wasn't bad. But it needed some fleshing out.

My writing style is to write down the bones. I just let myself go and get the words on the paper and that's it (NP, that's writing down the bones right? That's what I got from reading the book anyway). The bones might be 158 pages single spaced. They might be fantastic fiction as they are. But they are bones. If you leave them as bones, you have a skeleton and we all know skeletons can't live on their own.

So what's real time editing? That's the title of this post and you want to know what it is right? Real time editing is my secondary style of editing. You don't just edit once. If you do, you're in trouble. Before I start real time editing, I go through and comb my work. I pull scenes out and move them around or add new ones or whatever it needs. Then I read it aloud to my husband. That's real time editing. It's a live audio book with a lot of pauses.

Reading it aloud to him allows me to catch most of the gramatical problems and I'm able to hear how it sounds on the page. It also enables me to go through the work word by word. If I get caught up in my own story, I must be doing something right.

Real time editing might not work for you. But the point of this post is that you will edit more than once. If you aren't, you need to. But don't get down on yourself. Utilize the tools you have. Now sit down and write your three pages.