Man, I Missed Editing

So I actually edited a scene yesterday.  Technically, this whole draft is supposed to be editing, since it's the third draft and all. But for the last 20,000 words, I've been writing from scratch. In every draft, that chunk of the book was always the weakest and most poorly-conceived section. I knew something had to happen during those years of Somi's life, but for a long time I didn't know exactly what it was, or how to make it interesting, or how to tie it in to the rest of the plot. I'm happy to report that I think I've pretty much fixed that problem.

But it sucked not being able to edit. I kept thinking the last draft would have at least skeletons of some of these scenes, and then I'd look, and nope. The scene existed only in my mind. But then yesterday I hit a portion of the book that I do have usable scenes written for. It was seriously heavy editing, nothing like the shuffling and polishing I did to the first 35,000 words of the book. But it was still a relief to have that skeleton to hang the meat on, so to speak.

One thing that's really struck me is how much my dialogue sucks in that second draft. Now, when I wrote that draft, I wasn't trying to make it "sound good"; I was just trying to get the story written. But still. I'm not having any trouble rewriting it to be what I think is actually good dialogue; I'm just continually unsettled by how startlingly, aggressively bad it is. It sounds like a sequel to The Lord of the Rings written by an 8th grader.

I'm at 9,190 for the month. I just finished a chapter, and don't have a first line for the next one, so today will probably be a lot of work for not that many words. Unless the childcare fairy visits me and I get a magical full day off from life between now and next Monday, I'm probably not going to reach 15,000. But I'm not beating myself up for once. Progress is progress, and I'm proud of myself for sticking with it this month despite all kinds of obstacles. Go me.