In “Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes” Steven King wrote: “Show your piece to a number of people – ten, let us say.” Fourteen people volunteered to beta read the first 100 pages of my novel. (I asked for feedback on 100 pages, not the entire manuscript, because an … More New Book Update: May the Muses Bless You with Worthy Beta Readers
At the Loft Pitch Conference in November, the two agents I pitched to invited me to send pages. (Woo-hoo!) I told the agent who wanted 100 pages that I’d just finished a major rewrite and wanted to polish the first 100 pages before sending them to her. She said “Of course. Take the time you … More New Book Update: Back Off Author, Characters Need to Do It Themselves
It is finished! The last chapter of the rewrite of my novel The Essential Path is drafted, tweaked and imported into Scrivener. My target dates did work. I didn’t hit them all exactly as planned, but they kept me in the ballpark. I finished the last chapter today, right on the target date I set. … More New Book Update: The Rewrite is Finished!
Hypergraphia is the compulsion to write. While I don’t have a clinical case of hypergraphia, typically caused by brain disorders, my desire to work on my novel rewrite has grown progressively more intense in the past two weeks. This morning, I drafted the two penultimate chapters! I had to push myself to stop drafting today … More New Book Update: What’s the Opposite of Writer’s Block?
About a month ago, Sara, a coaching client, and I talked about how she could set target dates as she drafted her novel. She decided to set a target for so many words per week and target dates for reaching specified total number of words. We talked about the potential emotional hazards this posed for … More New Book Update: Are Targets Dangerous for Writers?
You might encouraged and happy to know there are long stretches of working on a big writing project when all is calm, all is bright. … More New Book Update: Novel Revision Is in the Ballpark
In January, I returned to working on the actual manuscript of my novel. [In previous posts, I reviewed how I added new scene cards to my novel and used a Word table to restructure the novel at the level of those scenes.] As I added scenes featuring Kat, my new POV character, I read the … More New Book Update: How Potato Chip Chapters Made My Novel Leaner
If you’ve ever agonized over deleting a sentence, paragraph or whole chapter, but know it’s what you need to, there may be relief. Not always, not even often, but every once in a while, you can reincarnate the darling you had to kill. In a previous post, I described how identifying the fixed points in … More New Book Update: Reincarnate Your Darlings
My previous post introduced the paradox that imposing structure as I revise my novel gives me more creative freedom. This “structured freedom” allows characters and scenes to evolve with dissolving. How the Draft Evolves by Changing Locations This how my drafting evolved when I started adding new scenes for my new POV character Kat: Day … More New Book Update: Structure Gives Writing Freedom to Evolve
I love possibilities. I prefer to keep my options open. Too much structure makes me feel like I’m straightjacketed. (I’m an NP on the MBTI if you know what I mean). But I’m imposing structure as I revise my novel and still enjoying creative spontaneity. I never imagined that so much freedom could come from … More New Book Update: Creating Freedom from Structure
Bane of Your Resistance 