Editing the sex is the hardest

Last fall I entered the collective insanity that is National Novel Writing Month: you agree to write the first draft of a novel in 30 days beginning midnight 01 November and ending at 23:59:59 30 November. It’s not as hard as it sounds as the NaNo people consider “a novel” to be 50,000 words, which works out to 2,000 words per day.

Two thousand words, for most of us used to sitting in front of a computer, is not much more than a long e-mail or blog entry, right? The problem is that unless you stuff yourself into some mythical NaNo format, even if you make 50,000 words by or before November 30th your book probably isn’t going to be finished. And NaNo’s hard work, make no mistake. It illuminates for you how much of your life you spend doing other things besides writing (like watching 18 year-old Patrick Swayze movies on TV ’cause you’ve had a glass of wine with dinner and since you don’t drink any more you’re kind of a cheap drunk and when you’re slightly drunk you’re too stupid to do anything but suckle from the glass teat).

Some good things came out of the disciplined insanity of writing a first draft in a month: well, obviously, most of a first draft (I didn’t really “finish” the book until January); I met Jim; and I learned once and for all that writing is not a group activity.

But now I have this first draft of what is a moderately good novel and what the heck am I supposed to do with it? I skipped National Novel Editing Month because I don’t believe it’s possible to “speed edit.” The past few days without electricity, though, gave me the perfect opportunity to commune with the book. And what I discovered is that editing the sex is the hardest.

Yes, that’s right, there’s sex in my book, and as Susie Bright tells us “a good sex story is something that arouses the author.” The problem is, it’s damn hard to figure out if that comma should be deleted, or if an act is physically possible or it bends the characters into a parallelogram, when you’re all hot and bothered.

So I read it, made some small edits, and moved on to the rest of the book. Now that I’ve been through the entire thing once and gotten the obvious mistakes, I’ll go back and rework the sex. It’s a sacrifice but somehow I think I’ll manage.

Note: this entry, minus this note, the title, and the URLs, is 409 words.