Tuesday Comings and Goings

I've been absent from the blogging world for a bit while I try to figure out my next step. Right now I'm focusing on editing several mauscripts. I have a harddrive full of unusual historical manuscripts I'd like to publish, but want to make sure they're as good as I'm remembering them! Sometimes distance does make the book better.

What's on your agenda this week?

Thursday Progress

I haven't posted much because I'm deep in editing mode. Trying to get a couple books ready for public consumption. Between that and life, it's difficult to keep up with all the social networking I'm a part of. I am reading several books now--well listening to 1, reading 2 (one on my nightstand, one on the table for lunch breaks)

Canticle for Leibowitz on the dining room table
Geek Wisdom on my nightstand
Thereby Hangs a Tail on audio

Thursday Progress

This month I've devoted to reading over 2 stories I have completed but not published. Everyone knows the game: Write the book, send it out...and wait. Then revise and do it all again.

I'm in the revision stage. Not because I think plot elements need fixing, but because, as with all my stories, I think the opening can be tighter. I also wrote one of them with very stick guidelines and want to relax those to see if I can find a wider audience.

And the beat goes on...

What's your latest project? Writing, gardening, home repairs, or otherwise!

What was then

I can't believe how much I've learned writing-wise in 3 years. (In other things, too, but let's stick with writing.)

Just recently I read over In the Shadows, my Civil War novella. Coming in at 10,838 words it's one of the shorter stories I've done. It's also one of the weakest. I know what happened, it fell into the category of the write until the end and be done with it.

Since then, I've learned 2 very valuable things: Plot out your stories to the finest scene. (If that isn't your way #2 is even more important). Know your characters.

The end of In the Shadows is much stronger than the beginning. Why? I know who Jack & Marion were by the end. In the beginning, not so much and it reflects my lack of knowledge.

I'll be spending the next 2 weeks adding to this story, both in content and character development. When it's finished, I know it'll read so much better!

4 Things Never to Think About Your Book

This was originally going to be FIVE things, but then I realized I could combine so it ended up being FOUR. Less of a round number but alas.


Over the last few weeks, I've re-read 2 of my short stories. Shorter stories I guess you'd call them. Shadow State and In the Shadows, the stories I recently received the rights back to. I've learned several things in those read-thrus

1. Editing is super important. That 3rd reading you really don't want to do? Do it. I can't believe I missed a couple mistakes! Misspelled words, missing quotations, weird spacing.

2. Give yourself time between readings. I once finished a story and started the read thru that evening. Wow, what a mistake! Not only was my brain fried, but it was stuck on the ending when I needed to read the beginning.

3. No word you've written is that great. No matter how cool it is, how literary, how well it fits with the theme or style of the book, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. If people are stumbling over just to pronounce it, if you can't spell it on your own, it does not belong!

4. Going off, no word you've written is that great, edit yourself. Just because you wrote it doesn't mean it's the best thing since Shakespeare. I'm all for choosing every word that fits, carefully crafting the sentence/paragraph/scene/chapter...but if it needs cutting do it.

Thursday Progress

Have you ever looked back at a story and wondered just why you went in direction A instead of B or where you made a wrong turn when you should have taken a left at Albuquerque?

Not saying the story's wrong, just that I seemed to have missed a twist somewhere. And this is why there are 1st drafts (2nd drafts, 3rd...etc.). And why we self-edit before sending a story in. Not only for plot, grammar, and characterization, but for intensity.

Dark Inheritance (the working title of my Dark Regency story) is an extremely shadowy story with murder, betrayal, suspicion, spies, and a romance that's ever so intense. But the romance has to fit the plot and vice versa. It all comes down to words. The correct choice of them and the correct placement of them.

That's what I'll start this weekend, the final read-through of the story, one act at a time, before sending it in. Wish me luck!

Thursday Progress: 1920s story

Yes. I'm still running the Title Contest, but here are some more details about the story.

1. Emma Hunt is a PI working undercover to discover who's behind a kidnapping for ransom scheme.
2. Jared Callon is working for the US Government. Yes, he's interested in solving these high profile kidnappings, but he has a secret he's investigating, too.
3. From the first they're attracted to each other, but who is Emma, really, and what's Jared's true goal?
4. February, 1922 in Washington, DC
5. Bootleggers
6. Prohibition
7. Vaudeville

I'm more than halfway finished with the editing/rewriting of this story and couldn't be happier with it. I can't believe I wrote some of this stuff, and clearly I changed plots about 1/4 way through and never went back to fix anything.

To be fair, I also immediately set this aside once it was (nominally) finished to work on other stories, and never looked at it again until I pitched it to a senior editor at the NJRW Conference.

1920s story redux

Tri-dux? Is that a word? Re-redux? Either way, I'm slowly widdling it down. Revamping, rewording, basically rewriting large sections to get this story ready for submission. Man, makes me wish I'd done this when I finished it! Would've saved me lots of time now...

Alas I didn't. So I am now. But all this is really why the term 'FIRST DRAFT' was coined. I'm on draft 3, and am so very much happier with this, I can't begin to describe it.

The good news is that I'm through Acts 1 and 2 (of 5) and moving on through Act 3. I think I actually will have this finished by Christmas!

And don't forget my Title Contest!

Slowly editing

In reading the Prohibition era story over several obvious problems jumped out. Man, am I ever glad there's time to correct these? When did I decide it's a good idea to start with back story? When was it every okay to use an information dump?

Delete.

Delete.
Delete.

Phew! And 3000 words gone. Just like that. 9000 left to cut! But that's all right, now that the opening chapters flow better, it's easy enough to see where the rest of the story is going and let it go. Things are cut, there are extraneous details that no long fit and that can happily go. That'll cut thigs down significantly.

Conference workshop

Now that my brain is no longer fried from the great weekend at the NJRW conference, I can honestly say that the workshops I managed to get to were worth it. I met a lot of great people and had a blast.

I also got to pitch to some wonderful editors and will be sending them my stuff ASAP. (Except that 1920s story I have to cut by 10,000 words and edit since I finished it and shoved it aside months and months ago.)

Back story

First, before I get to anything, I want to say that I'm glad all my relatives are back safe and sound (in body if not in mind) from their various setbacks. Alex, I demand pictures of Italy! And no. I'm still convinced "calm, cool, and collected" is no one I'm related to!



Now, back story: Was watching Singing in the Rain last night, or the beginning at least. They take considerable time to go through Gene Kelly's Don Lockwood characters early life. How he got into show business, his move from stunt man to leading man. While slightly interesting, it wasn't very relevant to the story.

I know a lot of writers (me included until a very nice critique partner bashed me over the head and told me to cut it all) have a tendency to include long stretches of back story for their characters. They want everyone to know them as the writer does.

But that doesn't really move the story forward, nor does it do anything but slow the pacing down. Anything relevant to the character's past--as it pertains to the story--should be threaded through the story itself. Little bits of things that come out when they're important.

How do you thread your characters story into your novel? Or does he/she live in the here and now?

Dropping the ball

I hate the middle of book 2 in my Druids series, Dark Desire of the Druids 2: Sex & Subterfuge. I hated it so much I gutted it last week and wrote fresh. It's still not great. I don't know what's wrong, the first 1/3 has humor, sex, sexy banter, devious villains and their nefarious plots. The ending is full of heartbreak, climatic scenes, more sex, and lots of magick.

But the middle? Not so much.

I'm still in the process of polishing it, and I know it'll ever be PERFECT, but I hate to have anything less than stellar. So I forebare, going over scenes, cutting, adding, tweaking, and hoping the middle turns into something half-way great.

It's how I'm spending my Thursday night. At least it's too cold out to do anything else!

DON'T FORGET: Leave a comment on my Unusual Historical blog between now and Sunday 1/18/09 and enter to win a free copy of Book 1 in my Druid series, Dark Desire of the Druids I: Murder & Magick

Hitting the pavement

So to speak.

Getting published is harder than it sounds. Unless you're also trying to get published. And you aren't one of those miracle people the rest of us want to toss into a lake, or an outsider who thinks it's such a breeze, you know what I mean.

Writing is the easy part.

It's the rest that takes effort, time, persistence, and a really thick skin. Seriously thick. Plus you then have to listen to all those people asking when you'll be published - asking every week like you wouldn't be screaming it from the hilltops the SECOND that acceptance came in. Honestly.

So I'm spending my free time today looking for publishers. I know who's out there, I've done the research, but now I need specifics. Like what to send where, how much, and to whom.

Where's the easy button when you need it?