Tag: editing

South and back

~ sharon ~ Leave a comment

Just yesterday, I heard a “honk of geese” (that’s not the collective noun, but it should be) and looked up to see two V’s flying southeast over my house. That annual flight pattern always makes me think it’s time to get ready for winter.

Pexels pic

All month long, I’ve been meaning to do the math to figure out how much farther I’ve faux-walked (treadmill) and faux-biked (stationary) on the virtual trek I started down the Mississippi two years ago in October. Less sedentary folks would have made the journey multiple times by now. But I’ve been too busy to find each day’s tally. I do know I’ve made progress this year, but knowing the actual distance will have to wait. I can already pledge to try to do better next year, though.

I did make an actual car trek to Alabama in the beginning of the month to visit my youngest and his family. (No pix, sorry.) The worst of that trip was the day I–the avowed five-hour-a-day-max driver–was stuck on a highway that I later learned was closed by state police for two hours to conduct a high speed chase. Their high speeds meant turtle pace and stand-stills for the rest of us. I missed an early rerouting that might have saved me some of the nine hours I eventually spent in the car. Threw me off the rest of the ride home. (The visit, by the way, was wonderful.)

Guppy illustration

But the biggest delay in Mississippi River math early in the month was making final revisions on my short story for the Sisters in Crime Guppy Chapter eighth anthology, Gone Fishin’: Crime Takes a Holiday. (It’ll be out in February.) It’s my first fiction publication and I’m probably more excited about it than I should be. But I have always loved short stories. The first fiction I ever wrote was a short story–science fiction–about a lab that reached absolute zero. This one is about a vacation in Croatia that goes terribly wrong for a nanny and her ward. It’s called “Blood on the White Rose.” I can hardly wait to hold it in my hands.

Making the changes the editor suggested (after finishing the ones my critique group suggested) was different. He saw some clear holes, only one of which I knew I hadn’t dealt with well. I hope it’s better now. I have no idea if my post-acceptance experience was typical. But I’m working on another short story, so, with luck, I’ll find out. In any case, it was one of the challenges keeping me from the Mississippi walk math. And I’m anxious to get back to my short story now.

I’ve added two writing sessions to my routine this month. I need more time on task (and, apparently, less doing Mississippi math). And I signed up for the Sisters in Crime November Marathon. With luck, that will help me make progress on my novel! I’ll keep you posted.

A bientôt!

Thinking out loud

~ sharon ~ 7 Comments

Can it really be that I haven’t posted anything since November?

I had a goal to post things once a week, and then twice a month, and now we’re into a whole new year.

But I’m a couple of days into a Guppy class on revising a novel and I suspect I’ll be diving under again this month. So I wanted to share a few things before I disappear.

First, I want to mention that I’m a little nervous about my first real foray into revision. For several years, I’ve cranked out a rough first draft of a novel during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November. But my workload and other obligations kept me from doing anything to improve those novels.

Oh, I have actually changed a few words, here and there. I’ve certainly let the novels sit in my mind and stew. I’ve made some notes about what I want to change. I even printed one of them out and started going over it. But it is literally sitting on a shelf in a storage cabinet right now.

Until now, though, I’ve never really devoted myself to going through and systematically rewriting what I finished in any given November. That’s what I hope to do with the help of the class this month.

The first homework assignment was to do a complete read-through of the story we want to revise. I stopped writing it last October, knowing I had some problems to fix. But I moved on to a new first draft. I planned to go back to the October draft in December, but I wasn’t sure how to start. Then a friend told me about the Guppy class and I decided to sign-up and wait for it.

Turns out letting this one sit for three-months was about right. I saw it with pretty fresh eyes when I started reading it last weekend. Fresh enough eyes that a scene I added late in the first draft felt so awkward and forced that I have completely changed my mind about who one of the characters in the scene really is.

I’ve also had it in my head that I needed to write an alternate ending. It’s been popping into my head off and on these last few months. Turns out, I actually wrote it last fall. Well, I wrote a new climax for the book, not a full new ending. I managed to add most of the ending yesterday, after I finished the class homework on POV. (And that — another story — led the instructor to suggest I needed to add more interior dialogue. Not a gap I had seen.)

I debated for a bit about whether to write anything new until we got further into the class. Then I figured since the new ending is technically still in the first draft, I owed it to my self to get it down. After all, you can’t rewrite what you haven’t already written.

The only other thing I’ve done so far is eliminate a character by combining her with another. At this point, it was just making a global name change. But if my plans for this bunch of characters work out, she’ll show up in the next book.

Wish me luck.

A bientôt!

Remove the fat

~ sharon ~ Leave a comment

This post from econsultancy is about writing copy for websites, but the advice is good for most writers. We’ve long since moved beyond the complex, compound sentences of the 19th century. But many of us could still pare words from sentences. These tips show how.

Nine surprisingly lengthy tips for cutting and editing your copy | Econsultancy
https://econsultancy.com/blog/65314-nine-surprisingly-lengthy-tips-for-cutting-and-editing-your-copy/

First consider

~ sharon ~ Leave a comment

With the discovery of a lost Harper Lee manuscript, writers are talking about what to do with a first manuscript. At Writing the Novel, an author panel organized by WNIJ public radio at Northern Illinois University, the topic came up. (Another session is scheduled Feb. 18; check here for details.) While the stories of the three panelists varied, none said his or her first novel fell from their fingertips to publication without some bumps — and some work — in the road. Anne R. Allen offers some advice about what to do with first novels in this blog post.

Anne R. Allen’s Blog: Should You “Send Out” that First Novel? 9 Things to Consider First

http://annerallen.blogspot.com/2015/02/should-you-send-out-that-first-novel-9.html?m=1