Another Dip in the Editing Pool

In November, a group of us spent a lot of time writing together, which does tend to happen during NaNoWriMo.  It's so much easier to get the writing done if you have other people doing the same thing as you.

Anyway, we were talking about it, and we couldn't help but wonder why we, as writers, are so willing to work together and have a similar goal during November, but not the rest of the year.  Why do we let ourselves become less productive just because it isn't time for NaNo?

It didn't take us long to decide that we needed to come up with another month that was much sooner than April's Camp Nano session where we could all work together, and decided to have a February challenge for writing.

Why February, you ask?  Simple.  That was when I thought I would have something ready to write.  Yep.  That was the entire reason.  Turns out, I could have had something ready for January.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have something ready, but it's all good, I can just start planning another novel.

Here's the agreement:  During the month of February, we would have a writing challenge.  We all pick a writing goal (mine is 100k words, which should get me the second novel in my Jayne Pheare series written).

I'm quite excited for this.  It will be a month that isn't Nano where I might actually be productive (which was one of my goals for the year).  There won't be any websites to track our progress, but we will all be accountable to each other, and try to keep everyone on track for the month.

But wait, you say, what does all of this have to do with editing?  Now, that's where the story gets interesting.

You see, we were discussing this idea of ours to have a writing challenge and another girl said she would love to do it, but why not do an editing challenge in January too?


I, for one, was more than happy with this idea.  I have a ton of editing to get done, and having other people working at the same time for some reason always seems to help.  So I agreed immediately, and after a few other yeses, we had ourselves an editing challenge.

Of course, I finished the novel I was editing, and it's currently with beta readers, but I'm going to be editing Stolen Magick, a YA about a young girl who discovers that she has the ability to wield magick.  I had a lot of fun writing it, because a lot of stuff happened that wasn't originally planned.  Characters, plot points, love interests and entire chapters were added in, and I can't wait to see how it turned out.

So on January first, I will be diving head first in to the pool of editing another novel (which means that I have to actually pay attention to a world than the one I've been living in for the last little while).  It's going to be interesting.

2013 is going to be a great year, and it's going to start with some editing.  (nope, I never thought I would ever say those words either).

Are you going to get some editing done in January?  What's your favourite part of the writing process?