It’s here! The paperback edition of A Wink and a Smile—complete with my story “The Wheels on the Bus”—is now available for purchase on Amazon.
Follow the link below to get your copy:
Writing
It’s here! The paperback edition of A Wink and a Smile—complete with my story “The Wheels on the Bus”—is now available for purchase on Amazon.
Follow the link below to get your copy:
I’ve been doing my annual end-of-year inventory, looking back at what I hoped to accomplish and what I actually did accomplish this past year. Some things—like selling my house—didn’t come to fruition; others—like getting a salaried job with benefits—did.
When it came to my writing, it felt like I hadn’t done much. But when I looked through my writing folder, I realized I’d done a lot more than I realized.
Since January, I have:
My hope now is to continue this momentum in 2018!
I've been struggling with the second draft of The Novel for months. I was down to the last eight chapters and something kept niggling at me. Even with the changes, the story wasn't sitting right with me and for the life of me, I could not figure out why. I grew increasingly frustrated. Every time I opened Scrivener, it felt like an exercise in futility. I spent less and less of my writing time working on The Novel until I was avoiding it completely.
Then, about a month ago, while I was packing for my Wales trip, I had an epiphany. It finally hit me what was wrong with the manuscript, which gave me a way to fix it. The problem was, I was boarding a plane in short order and didn't have time to put that epiphany into action.
I've been home two weeks, and that epiphany has not left me. I spent last weekend scribbling ideas and even hand-wrote four pages of a new chapter. I think, maybe, I'm finally on the right track with this story.
Then tonight I opened Scrivener to remove the chapters that aren't working.
And I froze.
A panic seized me. It felt as if I'm doing harm to a living thing. It felt the way it did when I accidentally ran over a squirrel with my car. I do not like this feeling.
Still, I know this is the right thing to do. So I sit here with my thumb poised on my laptop trackpad, trying to summon the courage to click the chapters away. . . .
Almost one month ago to the day, I finished the first draft of my WIP. (That's work-in-progress, for those unfamiliar with the acronym.) That first draft took me 16 months to write. There were times I felt completely overwhelmed by the story, like maybe this particular story was beyond my ability to tell.
Now, after letting the manuscript sit for a month, I've spent this weekend re-reading it, reviewing my notes, and making a plan for Draft 2. The novel wasn't nearly as bad as I remember it being. It's still flawed (there's a reason schools call first drafts "sloppy copies"), but it has better bones than I thought it did.
I'm excited to dive back in. I've missed these characters. I've missed this story. And I've missed revising. Revising, I think, is my favorite part of the writing process. I revise much faster than I draft. It's far easier for me to re-shape or replace something that already exists than it is to come up with something new out of whole cloth. This is the part of the process where I shine, I think. And I'm eager to get going again.
I told myself that I'd finish my Draft 2 plan this weekend and dive into the actual revising on Monday. But my typing fingers are itchy, so I'll probably get started tonight. Tally ho!