Category: writing life

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The week behind, the week ahead

  By current projects, personal & miscellaneous, writing life

Last week I did nothing on the novel editing. Nothing. I have a fresh copy of the manuscript all printed and waiting patiently for the not-so-gentle attentions of my red pen, but it spent the week unscathed.

Instead of editing, I was running the book fair at my son’s school, which ultimately results in a lovely pile of new books for the school library, and I spent one school day doing Writers In the Schools presentations at another local school. While both undertakings were highly successful, they precluded any notions of working on the edit, and although I might have squeezed in a bit of time on it here or there, I honestly didn’t try. My brain was not in the right place and had too much other stuff filling up the forefront of it to believe that I’d really accomplish anything useful.

One very nice thing that happened at the school presentations was that I read the opening of my middle-grade novel, “The Seventh Crow” to three classes. In each case they listened with rapt attention and begged for more, so that was a very encouraging test-run.

The upcoming week should be a different story with regard to the editing. I hope to work at it every day, but I don’t really have any idea of how quickly it will go or where I want to be on it by weeks’ end. Have to wait and see on that one. I also have to look to the March issue of The Scriptorium this week and try to write some more on a story I want to submit by the end of March, as well as keep moving on Third Person Press work, so…it’s going to be busy.

However, if you read this blog with any regularity, you already know that’s the story of my life… ;)

*Photo by malko at sxc.hu

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Phase Two Edits–Complete!

  By current projects, personal & miscellaneous, writer development, writing life

Photobucket Today I made it through the last of my editing notes, added the last bits that I knew were needed, and called it a wrap on phase two of the novel edit. I’ve added about 7000 new words during this phase, which was good.

One more phase to go–the one I call “making it pretty.” This means I’ll be line-editing the whole thing and looking for places to add description and sensory images, deepening characterization, and just basically polishing the entire thing until it (hopefully) shines.

I’m getting tired of looking at it, but I find this upcoming phase of revision is usually very satisfying, and not as much hard work as the last phase. It’s a strange mix of right-and-left brain work that I generally find invigorating. I have the school book fair and a school visit coming up in the next week and a half, though, so I don’t expect to have a lot of time to work through it until those things are over. I’m going to posit another two to three weeks to get to the end, which is not bad. I’ll be quite pleased if I can make that deadline.

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Revision Paranoia

  By current projects, publishing, writer development, writing life, writing log

Photobucket I’ve come to the point in this revision where I’m hearing voices in my head.

They’re saying things like, “This novel stinks,” and “It’s brilliant but not marketable,” and “It has more holes than last year’s socks,” and “This is a big waste of time you could be spending on other things.” In other words, it’s getting to be hard work, and my brain doesn’t want to do it any more.

Which is not to say that any or all of these things are not true. They could be. But I’ve come to the conclusion, through my own writing and by reading what other writers say about their experience, that I am not the best judge of that at this time. My job right now is to finish the thing, and show it to someone else–probably several someone elses–before I even start to think about it solely on its merits.

And before I can do that, I have to finish it. So off I go.

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A Word on Definitions

  By current projects, publishing, Third Person Press, writing life, writing log

No progress on the revision today, as I expected. However, we did have a productive Third Person Press meeting tonight and discussed some rewrite requests.

I also began writing a page of extended guidelines for TPP. One thing that we have noticed with some regularity is that many writers do not understand what we mean when we talk about “speculative fiction.”  Our calls for submission have always included the further clarification that we are looking for “science fiction, fantasy, horror, magic realism, and paranormal (for example, ghost stories).” Despite this, we still get quite a number of submissions that contain no speculative elements at all.

To address this problem, we’re adding this page of extended guidelines to the TPP site, and encouraging writers to read them before submitting. I know, I know. We will still get submissions that are not speculative. But the hope is that this will cut down on them to some extent.

I started in writing with a good will, but soon discovered why it’s so damn difficult to come up with a definition of speculative fiction that everyone agrees on–it’s even difficult to come up with one that serves our very narrow purpose. We’re not attempting to define the genre for everyone, just setting out what we are looking for vs. what we are not looking for, and even that’s hard. The field is so very broad, the sub-genres so very many, the possibilities so multitudinous, that one can’t include all the possible permutations. On the flip side, it’s also difficult to define what is not speculative fiction in such a way that we don’t accidentally preclude stories that we would like to see. The best I’ve come up with so far on that front is, “There is nothing in the story that steps outside the boundaries of accepted reality.” I think that might be too broad and too vague to be helpful.

I expect I will be working on this guidelines page through several drafts. Maybe I’ll have it done in time for our next project!

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Writing Log Update and Phase Two

  By current projects, publishing, writer development, writing life, writing log

Photobucket The writing log did not, as I suspected, end up in any better shape by the end of Sunday than it looked on Friday. I logged 294 out of a goal of 630 minutes of writing time. Discouraging. But–on to a new week.

Thus far things are looking better. Today I dove into the revision first thing this morning (well, after I slept in), and worked on it intermittently through the day. Thus I have 194 minutes logged already, and I’m through eight scenes incorporating changes and adding things. It’s flowing well, and despite the weekend break I still feel I have a good handle on the novel in its totality and what things need to happen. Interesting things I had to do in relation to the revision today included reading poetry by T.S. Eliot and Percy Bysshe Shelley, investigating brain function, and considering the possible side effects of an invented medication (being married to a pharmacist came in extremely handy at that point, as you can imagine).

Tomorrow will be school library day, and then I believe a Third Person Press meeting in the evening, so it is not likely to be nearly as productive. In fact, I will feel lucky to get any revision time in at all. But we’ll see how it goes. I am not revising my goal time back down after last week’s poor showing; I’ll stick with the new time until I get it.

On a side note, I spent far too much time today (and yesterday) trying to figure out and keep up-to-date on the Amazon and MacMillan brouhaha. I’m still in the My Head Hurts Trying To Fully Understand it All camp, and likely to stay there despite reading many illuminating blog posts and commentaries. My only conclusion is that the ebook battle has scarce begun, and there looks to be no clear end in sight.

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ROML* Rolls Over Another Week

  By current projects, personal & miscellaneous, reading, writing life

Photobucket While I still have two days left to log writing time for this week, they will be the weekend, so I think it’s highly unlikely that I will get to my goal hours this time around. Maybe it serves me right for getting cocky about how well last week went (614 minutes) and upping my goal by half an hour. When I think about it, though, it was mostly *Rest Of My Life issues that kept me from writing.

I’m really not sure what I can do about that except try to plan better (the things I CAN plan) and try to find catch-up time when the planning doesn’t work.

~.~.~

In other news, I came to a huge and sad realization last night. I need to get rid of some books.

I’ve been buying books since I was in university and the city offered a variety of used book stores, of which I would make the rounds almost every weekend. The book acquisition habit has continued over the years, and although I do get more titles from the library these days (especially when trying an author for the first time) I still like to buy books. Part of me would like to count the number of books in the house–and part of me is afraid to do that.

However, when I was doing some pre-housecleaning housecleaning in the bedroom last week, I realized that I have at least 50+ books in that room alone waiting to be read or in various stages of being read. And when I do read them–I have nowhere to put them if I want to move new to-be-read books into that space. Every bookshelf in the house is already packed or over-packed. I don’t see us adding a new room to the house just to hold books. Sooooo…the only conclusion is that I have to get rid of some. And while we’re planning a Great Purge of the house this spring, the idea of sorting through the books and moving some them out of here is more daunting than all the rest of the things that I know need to be done.

*Sigh* I wonder if I could convince my husband to add on that extra room…

Photo courtesy of mzacha @ sxc.hu

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End of Revision Phase One

  By current projects, writer development, writing life

Photobucket This morning I arrived at the end of this phase of the revision process. That means I have a well-marked-up manuscript and approximately twelve handwritten looseleaf pages of notes on changes, scenes to add, inconsistencies to clear up, and things to check.

I have a feeling that that was the easy part.

All told, I logged fourteen hours of time working on this part of the revision. I expect the next phase will take much longer.

For this phase, I’ve been working at the kitchen table, because it offered me lots of room for my laptop, the various piles of manuscript pages, the notes binder, etc. Also, I’ve always found it helpful to do editing work away from my usual writing space. I don’t really know why that is; could have something to do with the different kind of brain activity, I suppose. I like to sit down away from the computer with the printout and red pen to do that kind of work.

At any rate, now I’ll be taking my pile of pages and notes and heading down to my office, to do the typing-in and new writing at my desktop machine. I’ll likely have to do some desk-cleaning first, but I think that will provide a good mental buffer while I switch from pure editorial mode into a sort of combined editor/writer mode.

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The Perils of Discovery

  By writer development, writing life

Photobucket In my last post, I mentioned being a “discovery writer.” Now, it’s not all that long since I came to the realization that there’s a name for writers who write the way I do. Previously, I thought I was just “a writer who doesn’t write outlines.” “Discovery writer” sounds oh-so-much more interesting.

Although it still boils down mostly to the fact that I don’t tend to write outlines. Before anyone protests, let me be clear that I have tried working from an outline. In one notable effort, I outlined the second and third books in a trilogy I was writing, in which I had to that point written only the first book. The second and third books have never been written, even though I still like the characters and the story.

Why? I mean, I have the whole outline written! It should be easy!

Except that, now that I’ve written the outline, and I know how the story goes–I have no further interest in writing it.

And that’s why I don’t write outlines.

Which is not to say that being a discovery writer is not without its perils. Working without an outline is maybe a bit like being an acrobat without a net. If I fall into trouble with the story, there’s nothing to catch me and put me back on track. And to tell the truth, it makes revision work–on a novel, at any rate–quite hellish. There’s the potential for a lot of inconsistencies, dropped storylines, characters who disappear and reappear randomly, and plot holes big enough to drive a semi through.

On the upside, it makes writing first drafts a heck of a lot of fun.

And to be clear, I do make a lot of notes on a story, both before I start it and while I’m writing it. I write down everything I know about the story and then I ask myself questions about what I don’t know, and jot down possible answers to those questions, along with any other corollary questions, ramifications of the possible answers, problems and drawbacks, character notes, etc. It’s not anything I would call an outline, though, and very often I never go back to the notes once I’ve written them.

I have a great respect for story planners and outliners, and perhaps just a bit of envy, because I have to admit that it seems like it would be easier to work that way. Discovery has its own joys, however, and as a storyteller, I appreciate the inherent value of a perilous journey.