I'm going through the second draft of Defender with my macros. Over time I've developed, expanded, and restructured them so that they're more efficient, and catch those writer mistakes. The difficulty is that it now takes a long time to get through a 100,000 word novel. On the plus side, these macros have helped me eliminate about 3,000 words.
But they still take a long time. The problem is, once you get halfway down and you're like "Christ, I just want to get these over with." So you start being more liberal with keeping those adverbs or crutch words. Which, of course, means sloppy work.
I didn't run the macros on first draft, because I figured it could be wasted time since A) I'd probably spot those mistakes in revision and B) a lot of parts would be cut and new ones added in. Now I'm wondering if I should run the macros either in first draft, or just do half in one draft, half in the other. Or simply not worry about certain macros like "find instances of that" and "find had or had been". Those take a long time to evaluate and think of replacements for.
Not to mention the fact that, when I'm reading, I rarely notice those repetitions. That includes my work and others work. I'm not going to be any Ekaterina Sedia. I'm trying to be more of a Stephen King. I'm wondering which ones to give priority to.Labels: being a writer, macros, revising
