My new work in progress (wip) is on a hit list. In the story, the heroine chases and pins down especially slippery pieces of information. I know who the assassins are – search engines. They have become so ubiquitous that the name of one of them is now the verb for using them all (“Google […]
After struggling with the structure for my new book, I gave up. Yep – I did. Me, the incurable optimist. I waved the white flag, threw in the towel, and then I red read. Lots. And I’m the better for it. I have learned that I was having so much trouble with this new novel because […]
Consider a clear, still mountain pool. Beautiful, isnt it? A disturbance – maybe a passing automobile – causes a rock to slide down the mountain side, hit a ledge and bounce into the water. Immediately, there are easily discernible ripples from the point of impact. Now visualize that the pool has several waterfalls at one […]
It’s finally happening. I’m at the end of preparing for rewrite. I celebrated early, dancing around until I was dizzy(er). After all, this past Mardi was Gras. Inevitably, Mercredi des Cendres rolled in; bringing clarity and sobriety. I was forced to remember that though I was at an end, it merely heralded the real beginning. To […]
Hello…hello…hellooo… Where are you…are you…yooou… Echoes resounded from the void in my timeline. I’d been so focused on tightly winding the action that I’d overlooked the leap from Sunday morning to Monday morning. Sunday afternoon and evening didn’t exist. Once I’d stumbled across the hole, I saw that it should have been painfully obvious. Having […]
November 16, 2010. The day I began the revision outline for the novel that is becoming Sparks. By the very next week I knew that while an outline is a must, it doesn’t give me the level of detail that I need. So I added a storyboard to my revision artifacts, and was still confident […]
During revision, silkscreening is one thing; constructing a scene is quite another. The complexity of my current WIP makes the process more an intricate choreography than a construction. We know that the basis of scene choreography is the Holy Quarternary of writing – goal, obstacle, action and resolution. In my particular case, many scenes in the story also […]
Something challenged me last Friday. Well, that’s probably an understatement. It actually brought out the worst in me. I’m pressuring myself to meet a self-imposed deadline. I flew into a snit and ultimately stomped away from my desk, banging the door shut behind me. Making matters worse, I’d forgotten that L was at school, and […]
I’m revising a WIP with complex story lines. Even so, my fear was that by now, my focus would be drawn away from the process. I expected that I would frantically be going after anything that looked like it could be a short project; something for easing the monotony of the revision process. Yes, I know it’s […]
This post was supposed to be a rant about too many files, because I was frustrated by having to search through so many when I needed to edit an artifact for my ‘work in progress’ (WIP). Added to that was the pressure of knowing how important it is to have a story outline, and having that knowledge reinforced […]
