Writer, Reader, Watcher, Dreamer
I’ve been having some trouble creating lately… so I’ll delete instead! It’s been nearly a year since I reached the end of my novel, so it’s about time I started editing it.
So, I started… and I’m wondering if I’ve really improved that much in the past year, or if I was just blinded by creative juices while writing… because, there’s… so much to fix…
This will be a fun few months rewriting every other paragraph and deleting the endless procession of gerunds.
Wish me luck..
I sent out my finished draft of The Observer to my writing group! Now, to await their ever useful feedback! It took a lot longer than I imagined to send it out, because every time I thought about doing it I would realize some other thing I wanted to change. I still have more things I want to add/change even now, but at some point, someone just needs to read the damn thing…
I wonder if that is a useful way to self edit… by imagining someone, or various specific people reading your work along with you…
I’m in the mood to destroy words! I think I’d better not, though, until at least a couple other people tell me the targeted words are bad. Otherwise I might just erase everything…
I have finished a first pass through of my novella, and fixed all the problems I had highlighted! Now to read it again and find a whole new slew of them (I’ve already found a few, sigh.)
I know it will never be ‘done.’ It will only ever be ‘good enough.’
But it is still frustrating noticing new problems. Why couldn’t I have noticed them before? Or while I was writing the damn thing?
But I guess that’s just not how it works.
The next step is to make a nicely readable word doc and get it out to my writing group to get some feedback! Also, I made a cover for fun (that’s it above) 🙂
Looking forward to sending this out somewhere, sometime this year!
Not even out of the first week. A good sign!
Damn it feels good to be a writer.
Creation has been slowed due to all the editing I’ve been doing, so it is a much needed brain flexing to actually work on something new.
Now, back to the grind…
ab·at·toir (1820) : SLAUGHTERHOUSE
abe·ce·dar·i·an : one learning the rudiments of something (as the alphabet) abecedarian adj (1665) 1 a : of or relating to the alphabet b : alphabetically arranged 2 : RUDIMENTARY
abu·lia (ca. 1864) : abnormal lack of ability to act or to make decisions — abu·lic \-lik\ adj
ace·dia (1607) : APATHY, BOREDOM
And I’m only up to ‘ac’ 😮
What other discoveries await me?
To write more? I bet one of them is to write more. All us writers tend to make that resolution every year. But the trick to keeping those resolutions is to make your goal something measurable, and achievable.
For example, no nebulous ‘write more’ goals. Pick something solid like ‘write a story each month’ or ‘post a blog entry every day’. It’s also important to make it realistic. If you normally only write a chapter or two per month, writing a novel in a year may not be realistic. If February rolls around and you’ve only written two chapters, you may sense that you’ll never make it in time, and give up altogether.
Instead, pick a goal that increases your pace, but not by so much that it requires you to become a whole new person before you can even start. If your current pace is a couple chapters a month, make a plan to write a chapter per week. If you get into the year and that pace seems not so hard, then increase it further.
Here are some goals of mine:
While that is less writing than I did last year, it is more editing! And overall more attention paid toward writing.
What are your goals for the new year?
