Spanner R5 #amediting Update: SpaNoEdMo 2014! or, I'd Better Finish This Thing Pronto

In my last post, I celebrated my ninth consecutive NaNoWriMo victory, which I won with Spanner Book 6. But now that I'm done with Book 6 (until I reach it in the edit phase), it's time for me to return to Book 1 for a very special "SpaNoEdMo".

I've completed some very important chapters, but most of the rest seems stubbornly resistant to editing. So I'll need a strategy for the month. I have most of the important character arcs worked out, except ironically Shira's own. Shira's is the most important because she has to make the most impact at the end by revealing herself as the true protagonist.

The strategy I'll adopt for the final edit of Book 1:

1. Work out Shira's character arc. By the end, she reveals herself to be far more than just some amoral young "fixit girl".
2. Give each chapter its own coherent plot as if it were an independent short story in a series of interconnected ones.

These are the keys I need to finish Book 1 at last. My goal is to get it completely edited and send it out to my beta readers by December 31. If I don't get it done now, will I ever get it done? Thus the deadline.

Here goes...

NaNoWriMo 2014: Victory #9 Achieved: or, It Was Spanner What Done It

I thought winning my ninth NaNoWriMo would be a cinch. Problem is, the novel wouldn't come. Then I realize that only one novel would come:

Chaos Angel Spanner Book 6: Business Is War. That one.

And indeed it came. I remembered several of the plot points I'd put in the initial five-volume manga plan I mapped out in the Project Notebooks back in 2000, plus several others I'd worked out or at least thought up in the years since. I found myself making references to the previous five volumes, indeed all the way back to the Spanner Incident in Book 1. My muse threw me several shocking new plot twists, including the deaths of several villains, the entire Socialist Revolutionary Organization left-wing terrorist group (with former villains as its new members), and even what is possibly the coolest character in the series, Willa (though the muse is already bringing her back in an equally shocking way at the beginning of Book 7).

I hit a surprising number of major plot points. This is a major improvement over two years ago, when I didn't get much of Book 5 written (when it was Book 3) and didn't hit most of the important plot points. I'll have to revisit Book 5 sometime soon, just to map out the plot more completely. But right now I'm taking a break after eleven days of way too much writing.

December will be my month for editing Book 1. My goal will be to edit it completely and send it out to my beta readers before New Year's Eve. It's getting ever more urgent as history catches up to my speculative fiction at an ever faster pace.

But first, I'm going to sit back and savor my ninth NaNoWriMo victory. Champagne is in order.