You Told Me I Was The Brightest Person You’ve Ever Met In Your Life, That Might Be True But I Don’t

Zerkalo (1975)

Me diste razones para dejar de amarte, pero ¿Cómo hacerlo? Tu eres mi definición del amor.

Otra vida etérea

New lover’s eyes and other sweet treats coming to my shop tomorrow!💝2/2/19 💝12:00 pm PST💝

#watercolor #tracylewisart #loverseyes #pink #vintageframes #valentines http://bit.ly/2MJdIFy

I just finished my first novel! The feeling is indescribable. Do you have any advice on editing, big or small?

Dear fate-and-chance,

Congratulations on joining THE ENDTIMES CLUB. 

Editing is basically the place the novels become novels — it’s impossible to overstate how the rough draft is only 10% of the process. Here is a pie chart demonstrating the overall gist. It’s messed up because I aggressively and deliberately misunderstand math at all times and also because I traced a ramekin full of discarded date pits on my desk for the outside, but you get the idea.

What I’m trying to say is: be prepared to spend the same amount of time editing as writing. 

GET CRITIQUE PARTNERS

This is the first step to editing. You need outside eyes. You don’t know if you have written the story you intended to tell until readers tell you that you’ve succeeded. A story is not complete until it has an audience. 

You can find some here. 

BIG PICTURE EDITS

It’s important to do your edits in the right order: there’s no point focusing on word choice when you don’t know if you’re going to keep a scene or not. What you’re looking for in big picture edits are

• pacing (is it taking you forever to get to your inciting incident? Are you leaping into breathless action so fast that the reader doesn’t have time to get emotionally invested? Is the general shape correct — do your stakes both emotional and physical slowly ratchet up til the climax?)

• clarity (do we know what the point of the book is? Do we understand who the main character is? Do we understand the stakes of the magic or the mystery or love story, etc?)

• momentum (are your scenes stacked in the correct order, or do you move backwards in stakes or have two scenes that essentially do the same thing?)

• consistency of character (are your characters consistent and inevitable? can we predict their behavior enough to be shocked if they do something out of character for once?)

• correctness of cast (do you have two characters who do the same thing in the plot? do you need to delete or add POVs or characters to your cast?)

• simplicity of execution (does the reader understand where they are in the plot? can they guess they are halfway through when they are halfway through, etc.?)

Title a document “outtakes.doc” and throw stuff that’s not working into it. You can always come back to them if you need them, but it’s often easier to see what you’re doing with the chaff removed.

LINE EDITS

Line edits are when you stop having to move big chunks around and can start fixing things within your newly edited shape. That is when you can start looking at adjusting pacing, tone, and momentum on a line level. Example:

Original sentence: The box rolled out of the truck and hit the ground.

Speed things up: Wham. The box, dropped. Tssss. Glass, exploded.

Slow things down: She snatched at air, and felt the whisper of the box sliding against her fingertips. The sound of the bottles exploding on the pavement echoed down the alley.

Ground us: Everything changed the moment that box hit the asphalt.

Tell us about a character: Ten years before, she’d been watching a box fall from through her mother’s hands in just this way. MORE ANECDOTE HERE 

COPYEDITS

This is the part where you actually fix typos and continuity errors, and it’s the least important part of editing. This is where you can enlist a non-bookish friend to feel useful, because the less invested you are in the book, the easier they are to spot. 

IN CONCLUSION

You could write entire books about revision — someone probably has — but this might be a start.

Happy wording.

urs,

Stiefvater

Study Looks for DNA Changes to Measure Parkinson’s Disease

Neurons derived from a patient with Parkinson’s disease. Courtesy of Regis Grailhe, Nasia Antoniou and Rebecca Matsas, Institut Pasteur Korea/Nikon Small World.

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Arizona State University (ASU) have received funding from The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) to launch a multi-year, $1.7-million effort to identify blood-based biomarkers of Parkinson’s disease (PD), which could improve care and accelerate new treatments for the neurodegenerative disorder, which affects nearly 1 million Americans, with 60,000 new cases diagnosed annually.

“The exact cause of Parkinson’s is unknown, but evidence points to a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Right now, there is no objective test or biomarker for PD, which increases the risk of misdiagnosis and delayed treatment,” said Paula Desplats, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine and co-principal investigator of the new study with Travis Dunckley, PhD, assistant research professor at ASU’s Biodesign Institute.

The new study will analyze nearly 2,500 blood samples collected longitudinally over three years in the MJFF-sponsored Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI). These samples include donations from patients diagnosed with idiopathic (cause unknown) PD; PD patients and asymptomatic individuals who carry a genetic mutation in the PD-implicated LRKK2 gene; at-risk populations of people with REM sleep behavior disorder and/or smell loss; as well as healthy control subjects. Researchers will analyze DNA methylation, an epigenetic modification of the DNA that can change genetic activity without changing the underlying sequence. DNA methylation is critical to turning genes on and off and affects a vast range of cellular functions and fundamental development.

“This epigenetic analysis could help us better understand the pathology of Parkinson’s disease, pointing to biomarker candidates and, potentially, novel therapeutic targets,” said Samantha Hutten, PhD, MJFF senior associate director of research partnerships. “In addition, this DNA methylation data grows the value of the PPMI clinical, imaging and biological database, the most robust in Parkinson’s research.”

“Study Looks for DNA Changes to Measure Parkinson’s Disease“

“Es tan duro verse al espejo. No hay nada allí.”

— Andy Warhol (via elcielosobremi)

Mis siete reinos por algo así

Tu,

La de ojos cafes oscuro si no estoy mal, aquellos que producen insomnio,

Tú,

La galaxia mas preciosa que eh visto, las constelaciones mas extrañas y hermosa del universo, las tienes tu

Tu,

Mi chica, por si algún dia sientes que no te quiero te daré un beso por cada lunar que encuentre, dicen que las estrellas matan personas, entonces quiero morir en tu mar de constelaciones,

Tu,

la de los mejores cráteres, me han contado que ah tu lado, los polvos estelares se ven de maravilla, y yo que llevo amandote tan poco, puedo llegar a decir, que no necesito verlos a ellos, si te tengo a ti,

Tu,

Chica de vestido rojo, y labios sabor a fresa, me encantas,

Tu,

Amor de mi vida, quiero que seamos eternos, quiero llenarte de mimos por la noches, y de besos por los dias,

Tu,

Hija de mamá, y papá, y dueña de mi, de mi alma, y de mi poesía, le dire a ellos que me habéis dado el mejor regaló, y si ellos no te lo han dicho, me siento orgullo de vos, porque logras tantas cosas en mi,

Tu,

Chica de manos suaves, y vos tierna, amo que me apoyes,

Tu,

Chica que ve arte, en el desastre, no dejes de amarme,

Te redactó esta poesía en esta moche oscura, porqué son las tantas de la noche, no tengo miedo, y eso es lo único que me queda hacerte a ti…

—Chico Roma.

La mayoría de las veces soy invisible para ti; pareciera que sólo me buscas cuando quieres sentirte bien contigo. No quieres ver que estoy de tu lado, que la vida en general es una guerra y que somos aliados...