Tag: Writing

Mentioned on ‘I Should Be Writing’

I thought I had posted this at the time, but apparently I didn’t.

My One Pass Revision effort was mentioned on Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing (show #41, June 17, 2006). Thanks to Mur for keeping me honest in front of a larger audience.

If you haven’t heard it before, you really ought to check it out.

One Pass Revision: Day 7 (144/563)

Manuscript Slog Page Count
144/563

Took a while to get started this morning, but once I got going things went well. I think I’m going to have some scene re-ordering to do, but I’m going to ignore that (mostly) until after the type in. I’m probably breaking the One Pass process a bit with that, but it’s what I feel I need to do.

The plan is to eat lunch, help bathe the kids, and then get back to this. We’ll see!

One Pass Revision: Day 6 (Belated)

Manuscript Slog Page Count
118/563

This is actually my post for Tuesday. I should have posted it that morning, but I had every intention of getting more done. Since then we’ve had a few power failures and other fun time black holes. The systems are UPS protected now, but it took two days to get everything working again.

We’ve got a really busy weekend coming up, and lot’s to get done before then, so that’s probably it until next Tuesday. I’m pretty frustrated about it because I wanted to be done the read through by next Friday (along with a number of other commitments I’ve made). After that my schedule is going to get really nuts. Finding time for anything is going to be tough.

Bah. I’m going to bed.

One Pass Revision: Day 5

Manuscript Slog Page Count
98/563

Reached the end of Chapter 5 (not that the existing chapter breaks are going to mean much of anything). I’m surprised how easy it is to brutally remove entire scenes, ones I loved when I wrote them, and replace them with a single line somewhere else. Some of the POV adjustments are a bit more time consuming.

I hope to get back to this today, but I’ve got a lot of other stuff to get done, so no promises.

2YN: The Two-Year Novel Course, Year One

I feel compelled to recommend 2YN: The Two-Year Novel Course, Year One, by Lazette Gifford to anyone who has even considered writing a novel. I haven’t yet read the book, but I did take the class on which the book is based. In fact, I’m taking it again for my next novel.

The first year covers:
  • Writing Basics: Ideas, Genres, Themes, Conflict and more
  • Character development
  • Worldbuilding
  • Outlining
  • Writing, including what to do when you get stuck

Having gone through the process, and I can tell you that it works. Pick up a copy now. It is currently available as a downloadable PDF, so you can get started right away. What are you waiting for?


Rebooting the Edit Process

It’s time to get back to editing my first novel. I’m going to start over. I read lots of articles on editing when I started, and one of them really stuck out: Holly Lisle’s One-Pass Manuscript Revision. I recently re-read the article, and it makes a lot more sense now. Right from the opening it grabbed me and said, “Just start over and try this.”

The first draft of your novel is finished. Now, according to the recommendations of any number of writing books, pundits, and writers who go through this themselves, you’re in for five or ten or more rounds of revision, in which you’ll polish your work until it is a gleaming, perfect pearl … and in which process you’ll dither for months or years.

You can do that if you want. But you don’t have to.

I believed that when I read it the first time, but I didn’t have the confidence to try it. Instead I tried something which can only be called “my way.” I can tell you with great confidence that “my way” sucks big time. Maybe I needed to fail on my own before trusting someone else on this. Who knows.

So I need to start with the Supplies section, and the thing that sticks out right now is:

A table where you have room to stack your manuscript into three piles and have the spiral-bound notebook open at the same time.

Yeah. I have that. It’s the rear section of my desk. Problem is it currently looks like this:

Supplies: The Desk

So that’ll be step one for me. Clean the desk!

Using a Mind Map to Organize Novel Notes

I downloaded Freemind to help organize my notes for the new novel. I’m really pleased with it. It’s easy to use, and really lets me get my thoughts down. I’m impressed with how easy it is to navigate around.

Here’s what my notes so far look like fully expanded:
BWC Notes Mind Map
You can’t really make them out, but there are little arrows connecting the nodes.

Still Writing

I haven’t been posting much, and I haven’t mentioned writing in a while, so here’s a quick update. The novel edit is on hold right now. I need to rethink my approach. There are some problems, and I have a good feeling what they are, but I’m not sure how to fix them yet. Every time I’m sitting still for 10 seconds to think about it someone gives me something to do. So I’m working on other writing related tasks. I’m doing world-building work for another novel, and I’m writing some short stories set in that world to help flesh some things out.