Category: revisions

Still Eyeball-Deep…

…in revisions on the werewolf story, but I think I’m making progress. Well, I feel like I’m making progress, anyway. Still loving this story, and the characters, even as I’m modifying them a bit. I’m getting close to the parts that will have to be totally-rewritten, which is something of a daunting idea, but I’m still excited about it.

The angel story is coming along well, too. Finished up the focus outline, and Muse tossed me some neat bits to help thicken the plot. Little things, but I think they’ll add a lot of depth and conflict, so I’m looking forward to adding them into the mix.

Apart from that, it’s SPRING here! Everything is beautiful and blooming, and the sun is shining. I get spring fever and want to spend lots of time outdoors. Not exactly conducive to getting a lot of writing done…

Nothing Doing

Or, to be more accurate, I’m not doing much of anything. The revision is still going. No writing. Making progress on the angel revision as well. Other than that, nada. I haven’t even had time to read! I hope someone out there is making more progress than I am!

And So It Begins

After almost four months of blood, sweat, and tears with the HTRYN class, the real work has finally begun: the actual, hands-on revision. (Cue butterflies in the stomach. Big ones.) I almost had a panic attack before starting, but eventually I calmed down and got a grip. The first scene was technically a new scene—it was one I lost in the computer mishap—so I had to re-write it, as well as the second scene. I’m pretty happy with how they turned out, though.

I’m not trying to get too ambitious, but I’d like to have this revision pass done in four weeks. Not entirely unreasonable, considering there’s about 125 scenes. Some of them (a few), will only require minor work, but there are a lot of new scenes to be written—including the chunk at the end that I lost.

Judging from the marked-up pages I’ve already been through, I don’t think I’m going to have any “perfect” pages (ones that don’t need any changes). Stressful and intimidating, but at least it has begun.

Nothing To See Here; Move Along

I don’t have any startling revelations to report this week, sadly. The writing is going well. The revisions on Tempest are still going, although this week is kind of a slog through murky waters dealing with setting details. I’m getting the final things in order to begin the actual revision pass through the werewolf story, which starts next week. I’m a little nervous about that. I hope I can actually get the vision I have for this story, the vision that’s grown stronger with this class, down on paper and do it justice.

Let’s see, what else has been going on? I went to the Fairgrounds racetrack on Saturday to see 2009 Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra race. There were an estimated 12,000 people there, and it was a beautiful spring day, if a little bit windy. Sadly, Rachel got beaten, although it was a good race, and fun to watch. It was an interesting experience. I’ve never seen people holding up signs at a horse race before, and the track is always a good place to go for people watching. People will wear anything out there, and it cracks me up. Seriously, would you wear 4-inch stilettos if you knew you were going to be tramping around on concrete for 5 hours? Not me. I’d trip and break my neck. But it proved quite entertaining.

And…that’s pretty much it for me for now. I’ve two crits to work on for my crit group, along with various other odds and ends to keep me on-track for my goals for the year. Other than that, it’s all good.

Eureka!

Have you ever had one of those “AHA!” moments where something just clicks in your writing and everything just falls into place? I had one of those moments Sunday when I read the new HTRYN lesson. It was about time: flashbacks, flashforwards, etc. One of the exercises is to pick a scene and move it to the beginning and make it your opening scene.

I knew immediately which scene would work best as an opening, would create the most impact and conflict right off the bat. I felt like I’d been struck by lightening! I will definitely be moving this scene and opening the story with it, then I’ll go into more detail when I get to its proper place. I think opening with it will immediately draw the reader in and keep them hooked until they find out what’s going on.

So far, this lesson has clicked with me, and it definitely makes the top five best lessons I’ve learned from HTRYN. I think the class may be open again for enrollment, so if revision is something you struggle with, you should definitely check it out.

Spinning My Wheels

Do you ever feel like you’re at a constant, frenetic pace, but you’re not actually going anywhere? Well, that’s the way my life’s been going this week. (Please tell me I’m not the only one who feels like this!) Busy, busy. I’ve gotten a bit of writing done, but I haven’t hit my goals consistently (or even written a single word today). However, I’m making huge progress–at least I feel like it–in my revisions.

I broke down the angel story into plot and subplots, and wrote The Sentence for the whole book AND the individual threads. Wow. That was quite an eye-opening experience. I discovered that my plot has less scenes (by a nice margin, too) than one of my subplots, so that’s going to require some changes, whether or not I switch the subplot to be the main plot or not. And I can see there are some other scenes that I need to write, although I’m not quite sure what they are yet.

In the werewolf story, I’m currently dealing with time. I had to sit down and figure out when each scene took place (Day one, day three, etc.). Which would have been MUCH easier if I’d kept the scratch calendar I made when I was outlining the second half of the story, complete with the scenes penciled in on their respective dates. (NOTE TO SELF: Do not throw any story notes away. AT ALL. No matter how trivial they seem at the time.) I’ve figured out that my scenes are heavily skewed towards the beginning and ending time-wise, of my story (which stretches over a 3-month period), so I’ll be looking at changing that a little bit as well.

Other than that, one of my brothers got to town yesterday, and the other will be here tomorrow, so this weekend is family time!

Advantages Of Living In The South

When the forecast calls for the potential for snow (Or sleet, or a “wintry mix”), things shut down. Everything shuts down. The best part about that? My job actually cares about the safety of its employees, so they closed those of us in the “affected” area down for Friday. Which meant I had an unexpected–but very much welcome–day off. So I stayed home, and watched the record-breaking snowfall back home (the DFW area). It was beautiful, but I was glad I missed it. Meanwhile, all we got was rain. LOTS of rain. To the point that when I had to go outside, I was immensely grateful for my new rain boots, because there was at least three inches of water standing. Which would have been horrific if the temperature had dropped to the expected low and everything had actually frozen over (A lot of people said that was bound to happen, what with the Saints winning the Superbowl and all).

So instead of working on Friday, I got a lot of stuff done. I’m actually writing on the HTTS story. It’s going well so far. I’m working on revisions for the other three stories. The zombie story is coming along slowly, but surely. The werewolf story…Wow. The actual revision itself should be interesting. And the angel story…I find I’m very unhappy with the POV, but I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do to fix it. For now, it’s enough for me to know that it IS an issue, and I CAN fix it. And I will. No matter how much work it entails.

I Think My Muse Is Out To Get Me

I’ll admit I’m something of an overachiever. Well, maybe it would be better to say that I try to do too much, and when I don’t have 17 things going on, I feel sort of lost. I also feel like I do my best work when I’m on the verge of being overwhelmed. That’s a pretty accurate statement. (And if you’ve seen my goals for the year, you know it’s true.) So, this month my focus was supposed to be on three things:

1) Revise the werewolf story (one lesson per week)
2) Revise the zombie story (one lesson per month)
3) Do four lessons in HTTS and start writing that story.

APPARENTLY, that wasn’t enough for my Muse. Nope. He decided that I ALSO needed to start revising the angel story, because it’s been burning a hole in the back of our brains for a while now, and I haven’t even looked at it since I finished it on November 30th 2008. Clearly, Muse thinks it’s been simmering back there long enough, and it’s time to bring it out, make it look all appetizing, and put it on the menu. (Perhaps I should go eat breakfast. This is making me hungry.) Plus, I’ve seen a lot of angel stuff lately, and that’s got me itching to work on the story even more. So. Here I go. Revising three stories simultaneously (though not all at the same level of frenetic intensity) while writing another one. The goal is to have a complete first draft from HTTS as well as two revised manuscripts by May–when I go on vacation. And boy, am I going to need it…

On The Other Side of the Looking Glass

So, if you haven’t heard, the New Orleans Saints are going to the Super Bowl. (And really, if you haven’t heard, what rock have you been hiding under?) First of all, let me say this: I’M GLAD THE SAINTS ARE GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL. There. That’s out of the way. Really, I’m glad. However…I don’t watch football. I don’t know anything about football. And I’m fairly new to the NOLA area, so I… don’t quite get the whole level of excitement that has invaded this area. I mean, I get that people have been waiting for this to happen for like 40 years, but to me, in my football-neutral mind, I’m thinking “So? It’s just a game.” Um, apparently not, to a LOT of people around here. At work, total strangers have been asking “Wasn’t that a great game?” (To which the reply “What game?” apparently isn’t an acceptable answer. Oops.) When they won the game Sunday night, there were fireworks going off outside. People driving down the street were honking their horns. People ran around outside screaming. And–and this part is kind of scary–people were shooting guns up into the air. It’s CRAZY. The newspaper sold out on Monday, so they had to re-print it yesterday, and everyone you see is wearing black and gold. Bourbon Street looked like Mardi Gras. It was just mind-blowing for me. That level of excitement I’d have to reserve for winning the lottery or getting a publishing contract.

In other, non-football-related news, my HTTS lessons are going much better this time. So far, anyway. The lesson I’m at now is outlining, one sentence per scene, on index cards. I’m not an index card person. I prefer to do a phase outline, with a paragraph or two (or sometimes a page) per chapter. But I promised myself I’d do these lessons like Holly says, so I sat down yesterday and started working on my cards. Counting the four scenes I already had sentences for (from previous worksheets), and the sentences I got from the 8k I already have written on the story, I had nine cards done. My goal was to do five more.

However, my Muse started pitching ideas at me, and when I finally stopped working on the cards, I had 30 cards done! 30! Woot! Go, Muse! Now I just need 5 cards today. I’m starting to get really excited about this story, too. Love the characters, and can’t wait to work on them again. Sam has some really mean things in store for her…

The werewolf revisions are going pretty well. I think I’m about to get into the really heavy-duty stuff, so I’m actually looking forward to that. And I saw Legion this weekend. SCARY–to me, anyway, I’m a chicken (Have you SEEN the preview where the old lady crawls on the ceiling? Bleh. TOO CREEPY!) –but it has me anxious to start revising Tempest.

And… that’s all for now.

Momentum…Fading…

I’ve been doing pretty well so far this year, keeping up with the lessons in the HTRYN course, and starting over with HTTS. But this week…Not so much. It’s been hard this week, and I haven’t had much “free” time to work. Nowhere near as much as I’d like, anyway. Not by a long shot. I should be finishing up lesson seven in HTRYN tomorrow. Instead, I haven’t even really started it, apart from printing out the worksheets, and reading the lesson about three times to try and grasp the information. It’s about Setting, and this lesson, for me, is DEEP. And very much needed… Hopefully I’ll get a chance to do some work on it later tonight.

On the up side, I did wake up two mornings ago with a complete story idea dancing before my eyes, so I grabbed a notebook and scribbled down the high points, as well as any details I could remember. Interesting story. And not like anything I’ve written. Epic fantasy with a heavy war element, which is totally not like me at all. Intriguing idea, though….(*staring at notebook with story notes longingly* No. Can’t work on that now. Have other darlings to worry about right now…But later, My Precious. Later.)

That’s about all I’ve got going on for now. How’s everyone else’s week going?