Part of my revision process is to make up sample copy for the back cover of the book; it keeps me on track as I cut and paste as well as showing if I’ve come up with a marketable story. Here is the current version:
What’s the harm in a little white lie?
Especially when it [...]
This week, I posted three sets of things important to me: An online piece on cutting-edge neuroscience research, e-mails to corporate people of importance and a snail-mail letter to my grandma. Only one of the three had the benefit of editing—and the other two show it. Rereading some of the e-mails I’ve sent, I find [...]
One of my historicals, “Musical Ties,” has made the final cut in the Washington Romance Writers annual writing contest (based on the first 3 chapters and synopsis). It’s the story of a high-born lady musician who lies to get her compositions published by a “truth-or-nothing” publisher at the end of the Napoleonic wars.
WRW is [...]
I love the audio and video courses I get from the Teaching Company; they distract me when I’m exercising and often challenge my preconceptions about history, science and music. But my first one on writing, Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft, also brought up some decades-old and nearly-forgotten anger and resentment.
Turns out there aren’t [...]
Spent about 12 hours re-plotting, need to make my characters goals conflict with one another, not just fighting the ‘machine.’ Itching to start writing, and this work-project is just about done!
Two comments on Saturday struck me. One, at a workshop for apprentice and master fiction writers, from a multi-published writer: Jane Austen is fun to read, and to read in many ways, and to re-read..
but we don’t need to hold ourselves up that high.
She aims for a level that would be fun to read [...]
I’m writing a 30,000 word wrap-up science piece these days at work. Organizing the details and shaping a coherent narrative is taking up all my writerly brainpower, so I’ve only worked on my novel 5 hours in the past 10 days. But the project should be thought-out by the end of next week. Will have [...]
A recent post on edittorent ranting about the use of “then” as a conjunction woke me up this morning far better than the green tea I was drinking.
Guilty, guilty, guilty. I quick-searched my first-draft WIP for “, then” (instead of “, and then”), and found 112 of them in 72,000 words. They probably aren’t all wrong, [...]
I’m dropping Nano this year. I’ve done it every year since 2000 (and won 5 times!), but this year it’s more important that I spend time editing and polishing the two manuscripts I have (in the same genre) than stopping the momentum to build another one (in a new genre). Not to mention the ten [...]
A crisis on the home front (economic, not physical), and I’ve been distracted all week. Now only one more day before NaNoWriMo and I’m 8,000 words away from my October goal! How can I start a new story when I don’t have the base for this story done yet? Will get up early tomorrow, work [...]