This Close...

Well hello fellow writer/readers, long time no see. I took a break from blogging after finishing my Writing Tips series. But now I'm back to your regular Wednesday updates.

So what have I been working on lately? I'm still trying to finish Moon Dragons. As of this blog, I am 3 scenes away from completing the first draft. 3 freaking scenes, and I still have a hard time writing. I realized yesterday as I was writing the climax that there is a lot of stuff I missed writing earlier on.

But that's okay. It happens in the first draft. You might get to the end and realize that you have not done a good job of setting up your epic conclusion. And that is what editing and rewriting are for. Make notes as you go and then fix them on your next go around.

I'm pretty sure I'll get this draft finished by the end of the week. And what happens then, you ask? Well, I'm going to let it sit and mellow like a fine wine for a month or so. Got to step away from the project so that I can approach it with fresh eyes.

And in the mean time, I'm going to start real work on my New Crow project. I'm calling it the New Crow, because I had a Crow project a couple years ago and about the only similar thing between these two projects is the main character and a nightclub. I'm pretty excited about this project and I can't wait to jump fully into it.

So the next time we see each other, I will have Moon Dragons draft one complete and I'll be able to tell you what's up with New Crow.

What are you working on right now? Something new, something old? Are you on a first draft or within the rounds of rewrites and editing? Leave a comment!

Thanks for reading! Have a great day and Go Write Something!

Getting Back on the Horse

This past week I have begun working on edits for White Crow. It took me awhile to figure out a new system on how to get any writing done when I spend most of my time holding a baby and a bottle. And along the way I learned that I can hand write faster than I can type with one hand. I'm hopeful that if I keep up my current pace I can finish round one of edits and maybe finish a second round by the end of the month. I'd be thrilled if I could have this manuscript ready for beta readers by July.

I've decided to keep Dragons in Space on hold until I get White Crow as edited as possible. I'll jump back into it while I'm waiting for others feedback. It's killing me to wait, I really want to work on this project, but I have to get White Crow done first or I'll never finish it.

In other news, over at Absolute Write there is a new Sci-fi/Fantasy challenge starting for this summer. I'm super excited about it and I plan on participating. As I do I'll share my work here as well. So look forward to that over the next few week.

And that's all I got for now. Thanks for reading! Have a good weekend!

Editing Update

Howdy readers!

I have finished the first read through of White Crow and have now started the rewriting process.

Editing is hard.  First I went through and found everything that was wrong (which was a lot, of course)and now I'm going through and fixing it (which is hard). I'm also retyping it all into a new document. Seems crazy, but with all the changes and moving around I'm doing, it seemed the easiest route.

And I'm hopeful, I'm sure this new draft will be much much better than the first and I won't be so ashamed to let other people see it. :)

In other news, if you haven't already checked it out, the Husband and I are doing a blog together. He builds ships in bottles and I help him write the blog. Go check it out! Siemens Bottling Co

Micro Update

Yes, I and this blog are still alive, you know, barely. ;)

I'm a little more than half way through my first read over of White Crow.  It's been really slow because life has been very busy the past couple months.  Of course it's only going to get crazier, but I'll keep trying.

Thanks for reading and Happy Monday!

Critiques

So, I'm not even half way through my WIP, but I decided to have my first chapter critiqued by my sister and my friends at Absolute Write. My sister got the entire chapter, all 3500+ words of it, but I only posted the first 977 words on the forum. You can find that post and all the lovely comments here.

Now this whole critiquing process was both good and bad for me. First we'll talk about the good.

Good Things:

A) It was a great lesson in having a thick skin and thanking people nicely for reading my work and taking the time to comment on it.

B) It showed me some of the very stupid mistakes I had made.

C) It gave me some great ideas/tips on what I could do to make it better.

Bad Thing: (notice I said "Thing" not "Things")

Now I want to go back and re-write the chapter and go a head and edit and re-write all that I have so far. This is not good. I can not afford to think that way. Because if I go back now and start re-working what I have now, I'll never finish the story.

There are people that I know that have been working on the same story for many many years but have never finished it because they've spent so much time editing the little bit that they have. I don't want to be like that. I need to finish telling the story. I need to see a completed first draft, all 70,000+ words that I'm hoping it will be. I need to know I can finish something before I go back and try to fix it.

But that is really hard. The Editor in me is dying to go back and work on that first chapter and make it perfect so that when people read it again they will have nothing to complain about. But i know that if I do, I'll get caught in that vicious little editing cycle and I'll never get back out.

So I must press on. Knowing that 90% of the words I type are total shit. I must keep putting my butt in my chair every morning and trying to finish this story. Because if I don't, my MC will jump out of my head, torture and then kill me in the slowest most painful way possible. And she can do it too, that's kind of her profession.

Oh, and as an ending note, I am not sure I'll make my self appointed deadline of May 26th. That gives me only 23 days to write more than 50,000 words. I'll try though, I'll try really hard.

To Edit or Not to Edit, That is the Question

So, a while ago I decided to change the point of view I was using for my WIP. I’m going from 3^rd to 1^st person. After some discussion with the people over at AW Forums, I decided that I just needed to keep writing and I’d worry about rewriting later. But, the other day as I was trying to plug along in my story, I realized that I could not continue until I fixed some major plot holes. I have gotten to a point where my MC and the Love Interest should have a little thing going. Like they should have made some important connections by now. But for some reason I skipped right over those parts in the early chapters. So I thought, “Well I guess I need to go back and write those parts”, but then I realized, those parts should be scattered all throughout (to make it authentic, you know). And then I concluded, “I need to re-write the whole damn thing!” Now, “the whole damn thing” is only 6 chapters, about 22K words. It won’t be too bad.

But this goes against everything I believe as far as a writing process goes. I’m totally in the “Just get it on paper” camp. I believe that a writer should just write and finish the story, and then go back and re-write and edit. So, I comfort myself with saying, “Well this is the story, I just skipped it and now I have to go back and write it.” Yeah…

Either way, I’ve already started re-writing the first chapter and it’s going well so far. I’m able to keep a lot of it the same, like 99% of the dialogue is unchanged. And I feel like I’m improving the rest of the exposition. I just have to do this because it’s bugging me so bad I can’t continue the story. I’m pretty sure that I can finish the re-write quickly. It’s taking a little bit of time because I am literally re-typing all of it. I’m changing so many of the words, it’s easier to just re-type it. If I push it, I know I can get all 6 chapters re-written in a couple weeks.

Wish me luck!