Adara VS April 23: Balancing Writing, Editing & Two Kittens
In this video: I review my progress towards publication in April 23, talking about balancing writing, editing & two new kittens.
Visual Description:
Shows Adara sat on a sofa with a green note book and gold stars where her writing progress is listed, speaking to the camera and interrupted every now and again by two black cats. It then shows Adara in her writing area reading and writing in front of a window, typing on a laptop with a black cat on the windowsill every now and then. When counting stars she has a black cat on her lap. The ending image shows a dark starry sky above a forest canopy with the words ‘writing my story one word at a time’ in the stars.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to The Canopy! In today's video, Adara VS April: editing and writing.
So this month, my novel came back from my editor, alongside it being Camp NaNoWriMo. I dropped Camp NaNoWriMo about two days in, even though I'd given myself kind off a modest 500 words a day goal. With chronic fatigue, you can never tell if you're going to be able to keep that up or not, especially if something lands on your plate that you don't see coming, which is just an energy drain. And that's what happened. I got two days in. I realized I likely with everything going on would not be able to pick it back up. But I moved on and still made some progress with writing anyway, which I am very pleased with.
So, my edits came back on the 24th, and I have set up a brand new system of balancing both projects. I don't like pushing one to one side for so long to focus on something else. I feel like I lose momentum, and I can get bogged down in [MEOW] working in the same thing time and time again.
Hello. [MEOW] Hi!
[MEOW] I hear you. Hi.
That was a cat interruption. We'll get to that later.
My edits came back on the 24th, and I then deployed a system which I have seen the absolutely marvellous Joey Paul use. Check her out; links are in the description. She has been open about the fact that she dedicates certain days to certain projects. So, she knows, okay, I'm gonna wake up on this day, and I know I'm doing this thing. Then, I'm gonna wake up on this day, and I know my focus is going to be here. That has been so helpful, so I'm not constantly writing but also thinking, should I really be doing this with my time or prioritizing one or the other? It keeps a sense of momentum going while at the same time not letting it drop, but also to a level where you can't get bored. It's been fantastic.
This is my first time working with an editor. I'm learning an awful lot as I go. So, I've set up my editing system where I'm working through the Word document of the manuscript, which she has sent me back with annotations all the way through and some changes which I can accept or reject, and I make sure to address every single comment that she's left with my own response, whether I agree or whether it's a good idea; or if I can understand where they're coming from. She has also put in a style sheet as well, a style guide showing which dictionaries she's using, which writing style she's using, a writer writing guide, and has created a style guide, which is essentially a list of all the punctuation that you should be using, where italics are used, any special names or places or phrases that I use with capitalization, or on things to make that standard as well. And it's coming up to the point where if there's something in there, oh, hello, where I can find out what the reasons are for why she's chosen to do something a certain way.
Come on. Are you coming?
Yes?
[Tut tut tut]
Hello.
Can't seem to work out if he wants to be in here or not. I think he hears me talking, so he keeps coming in just to see what's up. Let's get this back to where I had it - my laptop tray.
So, it has been a confidence boost overall. Yes, I'm learning a lot, but overly there weren't a great many things overarching that needed to be fixed, and her comments were glowing. And, in terms of this being an industry professional, I did hire someone via Reedsy. I'm very, very glad that I did.
Hello Kuriboh! Now I'm getting the other one. This is cat number two. Hi!
Hello.
Hi.
So, yes. Em.
Hello. So...
The new system has worked. I am definitely gaining momentum. Yes, yes.
Oo!
And that's the keyboard knocked over, and now I have both in. Both cats in the room. So, the system's worked. I'm definitely gaining momentum. I feel like I'm achieving by doing one scene every writing session that I have, and then the next day, I will get a lot of words in for the other novel. Oh! Do you want to be by? You curious about what's going on?
And now he's snuggled up on the desk chair. As you can see, I'm not short for companionship with my writing and editing anymore. It can get a tad frustrating though, when they walk across the keyboards, as you've just seen. But boop! There it goes. But I've realized just how hardy my keyboards and laptops are - very, very hardy. So yes, editing. It's going well. I can edit pretty fast. I'm doing about one scene every day so I don't overdo it with my energy, and then that just gives me a break. I feel like I'm giving time and gaining momentum with story one while at the same time keeping up the momentum with writing the draft for story two. It's a different part of my brain, but I think it's very worth it. I will get to the point at the pace that I'm going with the editing where I will be finished with novel one before I'm finished drafting novel two. I'll think about how to deal with that when the time comes, but I'm not worried. I think by that point, I'll have built up a very good momentum because the story will be so far along at this point.
Let's see. In terms of novel two, I'm just clicking on my laptop to see where we're at in terms of word count. Let's have a look. I believe I've reached a very good point in terms of word count. Let's see.
I'm at 17,000 words now for novel two, so that's almost a fifth of the way through. Still very early days, but I'm really getting used to the characters, their interactions; it's been magic. I think as soon as I broke through that 10,000 word barrier, things have just grown and grown and grown in momentum. And even on days when I didn't think I would have had the energy to have drafted anything, I'm finding I could do at least a hundred words, another 200 words, just keep chipping at it. Obviously, I haven't written every day, but I think now it's time to count up exactly what I've managed to do.
So with that being said, let's see how I did last month. I have here my notebook and some gold stars, and what I do is I give myself a rewards tariff. So for those of you who've seen this before, it's the same procedure as every month. For every 500 words that I write or every 20 minutes that I work on a different project, so for example, editing, revisions, etc., I reward myself with one gold star. And then for every 10 gold stars, I get to reward myself with the right to trade it in to buy a book at the end.
Nice.
You gonna keep me company? Yeah?
So, I have recorded all of my times on a spreadsheet as per usual, and I will be writing them in this notebook accordingly. So let's see where I got up to. For the sake of this video to keep it short, I'm going to fast forward this process.
Okay.
That's all counted now.
Hello.
And we have company again for the totals.
Right, let's see where we got up to. Yes, much love, much love.
Right, the totals, let's work this out, shall we? Let's see if I can operate this with one hand. This is why I'm glad I have this Bluetooth keyboard.
[PURRING]
Equals... Sum... Boop!
That's a total of 3966 words!
3,000... 3000...
Nine hundred [MEOW] and sixty-six words.
Hello Thelonious over there, this one here is Kuriboh. Total time, now let's see if we can work that one out. Equals... Hi... and equals sum... 118 minutes.
Hello!
Which is a total I believe of just under two hours, which considering I only just got the thing back from edits, not too bad.
So let's see if we can count these stars, including some of them that was left over...
Let's see if we can - OK. Let's see if we can count these stars, including some of which were from last month.
So, you're going to guide me through this, are you, Kuriboh?
Yes, okay, let's do it, and we'll do a count.
Okay, let's count: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Oh, there's a ten, draw around that. 10th, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15. 15 stars, which means one new book to me.
So. Now that's over and done with, I think you deserve a bit of an explanation. For a while now, Mr. Spence and myself have been thinking about getting a cat. Now, I've always grown up with dogs. Mr. Spence is the cat person. He has had a cat growing up for, oh, I think it was over 20 years old. And we had been looking into it. We thought, "Right, okay, we're getting the kitchen renovated. We had better wait until all that work is done." And our original plan was to go to a cat shelter or a cat and dog shelter and to rescue one, potentially, maybe in it's old age one that had been left behind or something like that.
We'd run through the ideas of what we would do if we got kittens, and then on Thursday the 20th, my sister called me, and she said, "Look, I have a friend who urgently needs to re-home her kittens, no fault of her own. They are 15 to 16 weeks old, who were born on the 3rd of January. Are you interested? I knew you were looking for a cat or cats, so I put your name forward." So, that phone call happened at four o'clock. At six o'clock, we were over there meeting the current owners who themselves had rescued these cats and had bottle-fed them, and very, very well. It's very unfortunate that that broke down, but then by eight o'clock we had the pair home with us. So they are now just under three months old. By the time this comes up, they may have turned four months old, and they are a pair of black cats. Very, very cute, very calming, love cuddles, but when they get going, they can have their mad half hour. But they do like to keep me company, so writing and editing now isn't so much of a solitary thing anymore, and that's great. As you can see, I've kind of transformed this windowsill into a bit of a bed for them, although I think they much prefer my warmth. We'll see in summer if that's still the case.
But they've been a joy, a bit of some crazy manic times, but also a joy. They have definitely taken to my laptops around the house, so the family laptops a lot, which in some ways has been quite challenging, but in other ways, I can see the appeal. It's where we're looking, they're warm. I'd say the pros outweigh the cons.
Their names, I don't know if you how much of that you've heard throughout this entire video, em, are Kuriboh and Thelonious. A few explanations: Kuriboh is a tiny little fluff ball of a character from a franchise called Yu-Gi-Oh! You can hear more about that in my previous video when I was just rhyming off names in my head for potential cat names. So, I chose that one. It also happens to be what the Japanese refer to in Mario for the Goombas and it also translates in Japanese literally to 'chestnut person'. And when these cats lie in the sunlight on the window for a while, their fur starts to become almost like a darkish brown, and you can see black stripes running through it. So, I think they do have some sort of tabby gene in them. We've taken a DNA test from Kuriboh and sent it off, so hopefully, in a couple of weeks' time, we should be able to confirm that or not, which is quite exciting. We really don't do things by half. And in terms of Thelonious, that was Mr. Spence's pick. You can either say it is known for the famous jazz musician, which Mr. Spence loves jazz, absolutely loves jazz. At one point, he was thinking about naming the cat Jazz, but Thelonious has a much better ring to it, I think. Very prestigious, and it does like to cli- he's already discovered the piano, and he does also like to climb on the guitar cases around the house, so lives up to his namesake that way. But it also, I thought I'd heard the name Thelonius from somewhere. It is the name of the Executioner in Shrek, so just another little tidbit for you.
The only thing I have to say on a kind of similar theme to Kuriboh is, em, you may already know that due to my many, well, my few health conditions, they impact me a lot, and I'm essentially housebound. Now, these cats are giving me such a lease of life, quality of life through the roof, having them as company; and I'm glad that we have the space to be able to do that. But on Kuriboh's namesake, aka the Goombas, I managed to actually get out of the house and to the cinema to see the Mario movie, and it was fantastic. It was a perfect homage to the games I grew up playing. But the fact is, since before the pandemic began, I have only been out of the house, other than for medical reasons, probably only about two or three times to the park, maybe once or twice, with a family member to a local shop and back, but that's literally, you can count it on my hands how many times I've actually left the house. And it was such a nice trip out, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's one of those, going to be probably, be a, like once every so many years thing because to get the taxis was difficult, the wheelchair accessible taxis and the cost of that and things like that.
I could go on, but while it occurred to me that while I was watching the film, like, okay, here's the Introduction to the Ordinary World, oh, there's the Dark Knight of the Soul. We must be 70% through the film. Why is that character even here? That they have no motive for being there. They're not adding to the story. It occurred to me that I was actually watching it both as, you know, a fan, which I enjoyed the film, but also as a writer, and I was picking the story apart, especially for the time check I'm like, okay, there it is, you know, Dark Knight of the Soul, it must be 70% of the way through, and I'm looking down and seeing if I can spot on my watch, and it's like, after a while, those story beats get ingrained, they really, really do. But anyway, just, we had already named the cat Kuriboh before deciding to go and see this film, but seeing this film wasn't even on the cards when we named the cat. Okay, so this, because of the interruptions, has been an extraordinarily long video, but I think that's it in a nutshell.
As I updated from last week, from last... As I updated from last month, I am now on the Board of Trustees for the charity Skimstone Arts, and I am currently the acting secretary, which I'm very pleased about. And we've had some very interesting conversations since, and I look forward to taking that forward next month as well.
So that's the layout of my next month. I'll be alternating days between writing novel two, editing novel one, hopefully with a combination of the two cats to keep me company. Did you manage to achieve Camp NaNoWriMo? I don't think I can commit to doing anything like that, but as long as I believe in myself that I know I won't just drop my writing, I will still keep coming back to it time and time again, then that is good enough for me. I do work at a turtle's pace, but I am getting there, and that's it from me this month as I continue to write my story...
...one day at a time.
Credits:
Thumbnail and ending image created free using canva.com
Music credit 1: ending theme – Adara Spence Music
credit 2: Beloved - Sakura Girl https://soundcloud.com/sakuragirl_off...
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/3ji1zZc
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/omTgn4GQcKAMusic
Credit 3: Soon We'll Fly by Ghostrifter Official https://bit.ly/ghostrifter-sc
Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA
3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/35reep7
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/q2vomZqSJuE
Credit 4: Xmas Song by Mr Spence
