November Nuttiness–CoronaLife Day 964

November 3, 2022 By Leave a Comment

The last week of October was insane for me. I had a conference from Monday-Wednesday. I learned tons, but my brain was pretty well fried. I would get home each evening and basically collapse.

Then on Thursday and Friday I spent a total of 7 hours walking my neighborhood hanging my Board of Education campaign brochures on people’s doors. I ended up with 4 blisters and a cut toe, but hopefully I also got some votes!

Then both Saturday and Sunday were taken up with family events.

And of course Monday was Halloween. Trick or Treating with my kid and avoiding the rain.

As I expected, I have spent much of this week catching up on things I didn’t have time to do last week. It’s a similar feeling to when you go back to work after a vacation–you need another vacation after digging out from the under the pile that accumulated while you were gone!

The good news is that I finished the Vertas edit on October 23rd, as I had hoped to. I have much more to do, but the heavy lifting is finished. My plan was to finish the heavy-lift edit before the conference and let it sit for a week or two while I was busy.

That way, I will have fresh eyes when I return to it. I know I have some continuity things to review, as well as at least 3 more scenes to add.

After that (and any other tweaks I see needed) I will let it sit once more while I read a craft book my editor suggested. If it prompts any other edits, I will do them.

At that point, I may be ready to have my editor look at it again.

I’m pretty pleased with where I am. And although I am not doing NaNoWriMo, I do intend to make progress this month!

Any of you doing NaNo?

Closing in on the Finish–CoronaLife Day 950

October 20, 2022 By Leave a Comment

I did get the writing time I had hoped for last week, and made good progress. I currently have 47 pages of the original manuscript left to get through.

This week was busy, with Board of Ed work as well as other volunteer work taking up much of my time. But I do hope to get at least one more writing session in before next week. Probably not enough to finish the revision, but close.

Next week, I have a conference Monday through Wednesday, so no writing those days.

My goal, however, is to have this revision done by the end of October. Then I can read through this version for continuity and tweaks.

What then? Then I will put it aside while I read a book on writing craft that my editor suggested because she felt it addresses the main problem I am having with the manuscript.

Once I have read that book and absorbed its wisdom, I will return to Veritas and apply any lessons learned as needed.

After another read through for polishing, I will likely be ready to have my editor look st it again.

A slow process, this, but this revision was a monster to tackle. I am willing to take the time to try and get it right–because I don’t want to have to do this level of revision again.

For me, I am happily coming to the end of my revision, as well as the end of another hectic October.

How is your autumn so far?

Mid-October Breather–CoronaLife Day 943

October 13, 2022 By Leave a Comment

It is hard to believe the middle of October is only a few days away. October is often hectic for me, and the next two weeks will certainly be, with meetings, a 3-day conference, anniversaries, a birthday,  Halloween festivities and Halloween itself!

This week, however, has been relatively quiet. Got some Board of Ed work done. I finally got around to cleaning my work area, which always feels good. This forced me to organize some things and reminded me of some genealogical mysteries I wanted to pursue.

Now that I have things in relative order, I hope to get a good bit of writing done on Thursday. There are about 75 pages of my original manuscript left to revise.

This revision is not the end, but I am pleased with it overall. The last revision left me feeling down and upset, so the positive feeling I have with this revision is a nice change.

I don’t expect to have much time to write the last few weeks of October, so I’m eager to see what I can get through before October hits the accelerator!

Work aside, I am enjoying the beautiful fall weather after the tremendously hot summer we had.

I hope you are also enjoying the autumn!

I Barely Blinked… CoronaLife Day 922

September 22, 2022 By 1 Comment

How is it blog time already? I feel like I just wrote the last one yesterday!

That “clear week” I thought I had to write last week? I have no idea where it went.

I got no writing done.

My Board of Ed duties and medical stuff ate up many more hours than I expected, which left me too frazzled and scattered to focus on my writing.

I am approaching some of the more difficult edits in Veritas, so I need some solid quiet time to be able to think these things through on the page.

And, no, I was not avoiding the edits through creative procrastination (this time).

I am actually eager to tackle these edits, as I am confident I can improve the story as I barrel toward the end. I am about 85 pages from the end, so I can feel it!

Once I finish these edits, I have farther to go. I will have to re-read it again for continuity. I also have other, smaller threads I want to weave in.

Then I have an entire craft book to read, to see if I can (or have) incorporated the ideas in that book, as suggested by my editor.

Will I get to this in the coming week?

No. No, I will not.

Why?

BOOK FAIR!!

My favorite event, creating and encouraging readers.

Veritas will wait one more week.

Settling In–CoronaLife Day 915

September 15, 2022 By Leave a Comment

Whew! Back to School Night was Tuesday, and it left me drained. Having to give 2 speeches will do that to me. An introvert writer who hates public speaking?! Who would have guessed?! Plus just being there for 5 hours was a lot.

So today I didn’t do much. Just necessities, like getting my kid off to school, ordering groceries, and saving an unaccompanied toddler from running into the road. (She had Houdini-ed her way out of her house.)

However, my overall progress on Veritas has been good. I am past the halfway point, so I can see the end.

Some of the remaining scenes will be among the hardest to fix, but I feel that the thought and fixes I have put into the scenes leading up to now will help guide me correctly through them.

I hope to get back into it today, and continue to chip away. I will have a pretty clear week ahead to make headway.

Then the Book Fair will be upon us and that week will see little writing. But that’s okay, because it will be full of kids with books!

Now that we are settling into school, I hope to settle into a writing rhythm where I can get something done every day.

I usually set my goal to a chapter a day. For me, that’s about a thousand words. When I am revising, I very often can get more than that done, but by setting realistic, achievable goals I feel better about my progress.

How about you? Are you settling in to Fall?

The Circular Nature of Revision–CoronaLife Day 894

August 25, 2022 By Leave a Comment

Last week I mentioned that I wanted to work on my YA scifi, Veritas, while my daughter was at camp. It turned out to be quite a productive week.

It took a couple of days to go over all my notes and get back into the swing of things, since it had been almost 2 years since I had last worked on it. But after I did, I got through 18,000 words. Some were new words, but most were revision.

This brought me almost to the halfway point of my novel. But sometimes when you revise, you hit a spot that requires going back into an earlier scene, or writing a whole new scene to insert earlier, so the current scene will make sense or have the desired emotional depth.

That’s what happened with this scene. It referred to something in passing that my editor thought needed deeper explanation earlier in the book so it would resonate more in the current scene. I agreed, so now I will be stopping my forward momentum until I write that new scene.

My editor’s attention to that particular scene also made me realize that certain events in my longer, full series, timeline did not work as written. Mostly it would have required a main character to be in two different places simultaneously. And even in a speculative fiction genre, that just didn’t work.

Therefore, I laid out my entire series timeline in a visual way, which helped me see where my time conflicts were. I then adjusted my series to make it all work. It required me to revise my thinking, too, letting go of my original idea of how things “had to be” and finding new configurations. So it turned out to be doubly good that my editor drew my attention to that scene.

Sometimes in writing you need to go backward to go forward. But since it is all necessary work, it is still progress!

Back in the Writing Saddle—CoronaLife Day 887

August 18, 2022 By Leave a Comment

My daughter is at camp this week. It is a day camp, and it is about 40 minutes from my house. Which means I am driving 2 hours and 40 minutes a day, 112 miles a day. It also means early rising and long days.

It also means a quiet house and writing time.

I have taken this opportunity to return to my YA scifi novel Veritas, which I had left in mid-revision when the pandemic hit and life became too stressful for me to have the proper mindset to work.

I spent Monday and Tuesday reviewing my copious notes and re-reading the rewrite as far as I had it. I remembered what I was trying to do, and where I was headed. Even more exciting, I liked the rewrite so far!

On Wednesday I dove back into the writing, managing a respectable 1,146 words on a brand new scene. My next step will be to return to the already written scenes and revise them to fit the new vision.

So while I may be a bit sleep-deprived, I am feeling good that I am making progress. This revision is a slow and painstaking one, as I measure each scene against feedback from my editor, the ideas found in Lisa Cron’s Story Genius, and the vision I have in my head. Weaving those parts together—and writing new material as needed—will hopefully create a story that is strong and compelling.

Vertias has been a project for a long time. This is my third major rewrite of the book. The first version I liked but a potential agent didn’t. I rewrote based on her feedback but disliked the result (so did she, as she passed on representing it). I returned my second version to my trusted editor Kathryn Craft, who also disliked the new version, but was able to articulate why and help me see a path to reclaiming what we both had loved about the original while addressing the remaining weaknesses.

I had embarked upon the mind-bending process of separating the wheat from the chaff when the pandemic hit and everything fell apart. Now I am inching back into it, and hope to continue once this week of camp is over.

After all, soon school will be back in session, and I will have a quiet house again.

Chipping Away–CoronaLife Day 880

August 11, 2022 By Leave a Comment

We’re closing in on the August halfway point. Hard to believe!

I did not get much done in the writing world this week, as Board of Education work is ramping up again. I’ve been chipping away at various projects for that this week, and another landed in my inbox today.

My daughter has camp next week, which will mean about 2 hours of driving for me per day. But I hope to use the rest of the day to get into my next writing project.

I had put my YA scifi Veritas on hold as life overtook me. I am in the midst of a major rewrite, and did not have the time, quiet, or mind space to focus on its complexities. I am planning on returning to it next week, remind myself what I’m doing, and getting back into it.

It was between Veritas and the sequel to The Witch of Zal, which I do have a first draft of complete. But the characters in Veritas have been intruding into my thoughts frequently, so I’m taking that as a sign that Veritas is ready for me to return.

That’s my plan. We shall see how it works out!

How is your August going?

The Non-Writing Part of Writing—CoronaLife Day 432

May 20, 2021 By Leave a Comment

This was one of those weeks where my other responsibilities fell on me hard, and I got very little done on any writing front. Although I hate weeks like that, they happen and I have to learn to roll with it.

People who are not writers think that if we are not getting words on the page, we are not writing. And while that may technically be true, that doesn’t mean we are not making some sort of writing progress.

As anyone who has followed this blog knows, I have been struggling with rewrites of my science fiction YA novel, Veritas. I’ve been chipping away at it, and feeling fairly happy with the new direction, but I have put it aside for now while I work on the non-fiction genealogy book. I am not in the right headspace to dive into fiction at the moment, so it is a good detour for me to take.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about it. I sometimes get ideas that I hurry to jot down in the notes for when I return. And I recently have been enjoying K.M. Weiland’s blog series on archetypes, which is making me think differently about not just Veritas, but the structure of possible follow-on books in a series.

So, my subconscious has been chewing on Veritas while I’ve been away. And I am also re-thinking the first chapter of another project, this one middle grade, The Curse of the Pharaoh’s Stone. I really love this book, but it has not found a traditional home. My co-author and I are contemplating self-publishing it, but I feel that the first chapter is our issue. We get conflicting feedback about it—some feel it is confusing, others are just fine with it. I think if we can get that right, we might yet find it a traditional home.

I also have another project that is not even on a back burner, more like on the warming pan. It is the sequel to my published book, The Witch of Zal. The first draft is written, but it needs a good deal of editing. And I am in the process of getting a new cover and illustrations for Book 1, before I move on with publishing Book 2.

As you can see, I have been doing a lot of non-writing writing. Sometimes you can move forward even when you aren’t putting words on the page.

How are you advancing your writing these days?

Wrapping Up October – CoronaLife Day 229

October 29, 2020 By Leave a Comment

The last week of October is always hectic and stressful for me. Several family celebrations plus Halloween makes for an unhappy introvert. And this year all the political turmoil added to the pandemic strain piles on the anxiety.

So I haven’t been very productive this week. Just have been exhausted and scattered. Which isn’t to say that I have done nothing. I have been thinking about my Veritas re-write, and as snatches of scenes or paragraphs I want to insert come to me, I have written them down. It’s fits and starts, but it’s progress. I hope to get those words into the computer before the week is out.

Those of you who have followed this blog for a while will know that we have had a rather adventurous time trying to keep guppies alive in our small 5-gallon fish tank. We’ve been through 8 fish. The last one died right before the lockdown in March, and our tank has been empty since.

We’ve begun “cycling” our tank again to get the ammonia and nitrate levels to zero before adding fish. It’s a slow process and currently leaving me scratching my head, but we seem to be getting there in spite of ourselves. Once we get the water right, we’ll get new fish, and hopefully keep them alive for a decent amount of time. Of course, the way coronavirus cases are rising in our neck of the woods, we will probably be ready for new fish right when we get closed down again!

So I have written a paltry few hundred words on my novel, and have been watching bacteria grow. Exciting times. But the end of October is always like this for me. I know come November I will be able to take a deep breath and feel some weight come off my shoulders.

I am not crazy enough to do NaNoWriMo this year. I do not have the headspace or emotional bandwidth for it. But I do want to try and at least get into a rhythm, dedicate some time each day to writing. We shall see.

Are you doing NaNo? If so, good luck!

Have a happy and safe Halloween, everyone!

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