Tag Archives: revision

off to a great (?) start

cowriting, my writing, revisions, , , , ,

not-off-to-a-good-startHey, remember how I was going to blog twice a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays??

Yeah. And…

Today is Wednesday.

Hmm.

On the plus side, I spent about four hours yesterday working on writing (lesson plans, work emails, and then–eventually!!–working on the RSWIP with my cowriter in a super-sweet new-to-me coffee shop. So good overall! And I do intend to continue with Tues/Sat as my preferred blog schedule… even though this week I was lying in bed ready to sleep Tuesday night before my eyes flew open in a panic as I remembered I’d forgotten to update the blog.

getsmartAaaanywho, despite having pulled a Maxwell Smart on my first regular blog update of the year (whoooops), I did still get a good deal of writing done, and I’m excited about it–tonight I’m back at it and have just cut over 1200 words from the draft I’m revising.

AND I’m also strangely nervous about this, but I’m going to be submitting pages from the RSWIP to my crit group. Why is this weird? Who knows. Why is this somehow scarier than giving them pages from the YA-SFF-WIP? Maybe because this is Romantic Suspense and nobody in IndyScribes “writes romance” (although most people’s stuff has romantic subplots from time to time) and I feel weirdly embarrassed and dorky about liking Romance, despite the fact that it sells super well, and is super popular, and since when do I care about people thinking I’m a weirdo?!?!

I was nervous the first time I sent them pages from the YASFFWIP, too, so probably it’s just that overall nervousness of “okay I’ve been working on this with my whole heart and soul for literally years now but tell me what you REALLY think of it” and I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Right?

Retreat to Move Forward

cowriting, fanfic, my writing, NaNoWriMo, personal life, revisions, , , , , ,

jackdonaghySo, tonight instead of writing words, I cut about 600 from the draft of the first chapter of the co-written Romantic Suspense WIP. (I need a better name for that. TCWRSWIP? Hmm, not much better, actually… And my writing partner and I definitely agree that I’m not allowed to come up with titles for anything else. Maybe I’ll see if she’s got any ideas.)

Anyway! I sort of can’t believe how much I’ve learned in the two-year fallow period I spent in between bursts of work on TCWRSWIP (for lack of a better title). I’ve been reading a lot about story structure, scene structure, beats, etc. at Jenny Crusie’s side project blog, and that has helped a lot; and, of course, the first version of this scene was sort of a trial balloon that Chel wrote to see if I had any interest in the concept (4 years and 143k+ words later, I think it’s safe to say yes–yes I did). But the story has changed very significantly since then in our minds.

So that draft did its job (get the writers interested).  Continue reading Retreat to Move Forward →

Blast from the Past

characterization, cowriting, Lilly grant, my writing, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

Well, while The Baby is napping, and C’s off feeding a friend’s cats and picking up his brother’s dog, I thought I’d try to pop up a quick entry. I’m working on finishing up my grant report for the Teacher Creativity Grant that led to the creation of this blog (fellow educators, GO APPLY!) and will post that shortly. I’ve also been doing some literary archaeology and re-reading the big, sprawling, terrifying novel draft that I was working on with a friend for several years (but no updates since… yikes, January 2015!).  Continue reading Blast from the Past →

Those old familiar tales

cowriting, fanfic, my writing, NaNoWriMo, revisions, , , , ,

reading-clip-art-reading-clipart-3Well, NaNo is going awfully (as expected… November is a TERRIBLE month for this! –at least for a teacher like myself) and I’ve been slacking on blogging, too. What’s a girl to do??

Well, I’ve been reading through my “back catalog,” if you will.

Of fanfic.

Continue reading Those old familiar tales →

Writing Dates

cowriting, my writing, revisions, Uncategorized, , ,

So, I am the sort of person who works best when others are around, even if I’m not talking to them. When left unsupervised, I have a tendency to procrastinate horribly unless I’m going to have to perform shortly with a hard deadline (this is why teaching works well for me–with literal bells ringing to tell me what to do next–and writing novels is a struggle, even though I really enjoy writing!).

termpaper#the struggle is real

So, to this end, I’ve set up a weekly “writing date” with a long-distance friend. Continue reading Writing Dates →