Editings: I does them...

Note unrelated to anything but which, in my foolish way, I thought was funny: Greg House is rather angsty and troubled, pushing everyone away (though you wouldn't know it from that picture, wouldja?). Years before House ever existed, I wrote a character named Greg who was rather angsty and troubled, pushing everyone away. Just the fact that they have the same name tickled me a bit.

Anyhoo, onto what I actually was going to talk about:

Editing! I've been sitting on the roots of Scorpion and Sandman for at least six or seven years and the actual manuscript since November of 2008 (NaNo! *whoot*) and I've been meaning to edit and have made several short-lived attempts at editing, but they have sort of been gathered together and ignored. Well, I dug them out and intend to actually try hardcore editing.

Now, my style of editing is very often rewriting at least once, followed by tweaking and whatnot. Mainly a lot of wordy parts need to be fixed in Scorpion and Sandman because of it's NaNo origins. That and some loose threads that go nowhere (though S&S was much better about tying everything together than Dirt Queen was... I read DQ recently and *shudder*... the plot holes...) lead to having to carve up some parts of the story.

Anyway, I started rewriting some beginning drivel. I cut at least two or three chapters from the beginning and am basically going to begin when Quina and Red first meet, rather than anything beforehand. In fact, I'm actually starting in-between their first and second meetings, but Quina doesn't recall the first one. Red does though and refers to it, so I'm hoping it will be intriguingly confusing at the beginning and smooth itself out by the end.

My scribbles thus far (written in math class, I might add) which probably will need editing to make pretty, but are just concerned with story now:

The light burned at her eyes, too bright after her having been in the dark so long. It blinded her and she stumbled along behind the hands that gripped her arms on either side as her eyes frantically worked to cope with the sudden stabbing rays of light. The grips on her arms pinched painfully and the force with which they pulled was inexorable. She tried to backpedal with her feet, trying to slow or reverse, but the hands merely jerked her along. So all she could do was squint against the light and try to avoid tripping as she was pulled along.

When the hands finally released her, she stood and blinked. Blue spots danced before her, but around them, she coudl see a broad expanse of red. It swayed beyond the blue spots and she staggered a little, teary-eyed and squinting. Finally the red resolved itself into a fenced ring of red dirt.

-o-o-o-

Red eyed her as the handlers shoved her into the ring. She reeled drunkenly and blinked at the ring, but she seemed even less alert than the first time she had come. She just stood and blinked.

I dunno... I'm working on things. Having read Spunk and Bite recently, I feel as if my writing is woefully inadequately clever. But I ascribe to solidness of story achieved first and then prettiness of prose. I just need to get the story hashed out on paper first and then things will improve, methinks.