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Tag Archives: fiction

Making the turn

So yeah, it’s taking longer than I thought, but this story is even better than I thought, so there. I’ll be running silent, running deep until vacation in a couple weeks. I really want to be done with this pass and take a complete break, but as the parents say, “we’ll see.”
On scene 50 of [...]

Posted 14 July 2010 † nickyp § Learning § Writing ‡ Comments (0) ° Also tagged: , , , , , ,

Off-line, on deadline

So, I’ll be running silent, running deep for a bit (like, 4-5 weeks) as I plow through the big second-draft revise. This pass includes the massive plot revise, character sharpening and combining, story rearranging, scene setting, and fluff cutting. I’m finding this nearly as hard as the scene-for-scene cards I did in April, and [...]

Posted 11 June 2010 † nickyp § Learning § Writing ‡ Comments (0) ° Also tagged: , , , , , ,

Second draft hurtles into view

So, after a sluggish start and some mild howling about the first draft of my Manchester story, I managed to build a weekend’s-full of space to get down to reorganizing and shaping this behemoth.

This is the revised sentence-for-scene outline, all 15.5 pages of it. It took me 17 hours over two days and the night [...]

Posted 07 April 2010 † nickyp § Learning § Reading § Thinking § Writing ‡ Comments (0) ° Also tagged: , , , , , , ,

How the reading is going

So, book club started the year with FIFTH BUSINESS, by Robertson Davies, this first of his Deptford trilogy. I read it in two days, enjoying the flawed narrator and the epistolary structure. This reads like a mature writer’s work, with hard-edged wisdom amid the old-fashioned storytelling.

But I have never thought that traits that are [...]

Posted 06 February 2010 † nickyp § Books § Reading § Writing ‡ Comments (0) ° Also tagged: , , ,

Enriched editions

Nicola Cornick’s latest historical fiction novel, Unmasked, is available as an “enriched edition” e-book at eharlequin.com. 

Harlequin promo:
 Have you ever read something in a novel and wished you could see a picture, find a definition, or learn more about it without having to look it up? Now you can! This special electronic book is enhanced with [...]

Posted 01 September 2008 † nickyp § Marketing § Reading ‡ Comments (0) ° Also tagged: , , , ,

Long live Sharpe

In the past six weeks, I’ve blown through more than 20 of the Richard Sharpe books by Bernard Cornwell (holding off on the 1820-set one to use as incentive to meet my page goals this month). 
Wow. Rollicking adventure, tight serial plotting and continuing characters who grow (somewhat). I read them in historical order, marveling that [...]

Posted 30 August 2008 † nickyp § Reading § Writing ‡ Comments (0) ° Also tagged: , , , , , , , , ,