Tips on Writing a novel and editing

Well, today is Thursday and I'm not sure if I'm ready yet to write the next Chapter of The Glorious Money Tree today.  I have written about three new articles on Triond under jfay1995.  A few on relationships and one on Monica Lewinsky publishing her tell all.

So, here's what I've been thinking about as of late as far as novel writing.  Yesterday, I finally started doing my first drawing for The Glorious Money Tree novel trilogy (young adult/adult genre).  Note:  It's still in progress and of course isn't finished but at least it is started.  It needs to have some ferns in it as it is the newest fairy in the novel in Chapter Fifteen, Peachanella.  And I will need to later dig out the colored pencils and do the color work for it.

Then, yesterday what I started to do is to go back into the Chapters and start a log of all the important things I need to know as I go along.  This is going to be extremely helpful as already in Chapter Fifteen and at page 70 or something like that, it is getting very complicated and I am going to need to have all my important facts on hand as I decide how it's all going to be connected.

Last week, I started to bring the whole novel so far into my word for windows software, as I think I should be writing it first there.  And later on when it is done, I will have to change it to html as Kindle Publishing wants it in this format.  And a few days ago, I discovered on a trip to Barnes and Noble to get my Angry Birds space game working, that it is also free to publish on the nook with them.  So, I may very well be publishing with both places and maybe others.  I may check into Bibliocracy books too.  Smashwords isn't compatible with Kindle so I am not sure if I will be going with them.  And I will need to read through all the guidelines to make sure everything is right.

My nephew wanted to play the Angry Birds and we couldn't get it to work.  It's working now, but unfortunately I'm not at their house now and am back in Vermont.  My sister said to make sure I have all my gadgets before I leave as there would be no hardship on the kids part if I left them.  ha ha.

Going back and writing down my notes, the skeleton of the story, and other highlights, I found myself editing the novel.  This is definitely a really good thing to keep up with when you are writing any sort of a novel.  The really fun part sure is the editing.


I keep thinking, what if I'm dead someday and get famous. And that is surely a big IF.  People really go dig up everything to use it say in biographies.  Like for Andy Warhol or any other artist, they use everything possible to let people know what their lives were like.  It's a form of documenting everything.  I mean, if you die and you were extremely talented in anything imaginable, people want to remember it in history to pass it on to the future.  That would be the only downfall if our world does ever end, that all the legacies would just evaporate into nothing and all that would ever remain are the spirits of our souls.

So as I was starting on the skeleton of the first chapters, I started to of course add more facts and information.  The story line really isn't going to change completely, but there will of course be more thoughts. 

I decided to change some of the wording.  For instance, Heather, Sally's best friend in the beginning says monies instead of money.  Which as I got thinking, hey, she's ten and shouldn't I have her talking more intelligently than that?  So I went back and corrected her grammar.  And as I went back, I worked on fixing some of the sentences that perhaps weren't complete.

Using It is for example, instead of it not being a complete sentence.  The majority of this was in their dialogue, but even so, I thought they should be using full sentences even when talking.

It does seem to take a long time to edit.  I think we need to go back into it many, many times because just going back in once you are never going to pick out all the mistakes.  It is so true about how everyone says, edit, edit, and edit some more.  You want your novel to be as perfect as can be, right?

Nobody, wants to read garbage, even if it is a smut book like 50 Shades of Grey.  I haven't gotten too much further yet, and am not really impressed but I will probably end up finishing the first book anyway.  I am not sure if I will be buying the other books that follow.

Any book where the writing is terrible you all know is going to get tossed in the trash so quick.  That's why you should really take all the time you need with your novels before you set out to publish them.  Make sure it lives up to it's potential as it will very likely determine the success of it.  We all want to have that same start as 50 Shades of Grey, Twilight series, and the Harry Potter novels, but we can never even begin to taste that success if we don't work hard in what we believe in.

Treat your novels as if they are your children, nurturing it, believing in your characters and having yourself jump into the story as if you were in their shoes.  Then it becomes believable.  Only then can it really work for you.

It's got to be your biggest passion to see the harvest come full circle.  It's like with art, we were always told to see the "Whole", and only then we can see.  That was perhaps the most important message I took away from The Maine College of Art many years ago.  Of course I took away all my expertise too, but that was a lasting impression amongst all the teachers.  It's the foundation of the art school.

Also, as I went back into the first few chapters, I noticed that I didn't describe some of the characters enough.  This may also be my next post here:  Character description tips.  Many people find this topic hard to figure out.  That's why there are so many books out there on the subject.

Perhaps what you might want to do is each day focus on a different chapter and see if you can fine tune it and make it just the way you want.

And as I got going, I thought that maybe I should be introducing the idea that even though Sally is only ten, she does like the boys.  A little love story might also be nice to introduce early on.

Well, that's about all I can think of for the moment.

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted September 20, 2012

Peachanella the campanula fairy.  Still very much in progress.  I used my Ellowyne Wilde doll below as the beginnings of the novel.  I think I started with the eyes and the heart shaped face, and I left it at that.