This blog is no longer maintained, but it contains posts dating back to when I was first trying to get published, so I'm keeping it here in the hopes that it might help other aspiring writers.
10 Things I Have Learned About Revising (aka, how not to die)
Aug 02, 2010
In no particular order:
1. If you’re writing along, plowing ahead in order to finish a draft, and you think of stuff you want to change later but don’t right at that moment because you want to finish, MAKE A NOTE OF IT SOMEWHERE. You aren’t actually going to remember later, no matter how sure you are at the time that you will.
2. Outline outline outline. Even if you’re a writer who abhors outlining ahead of time (like me), do try outlining your plot after having written the first draft. This makes it so much easier to see the problem points, and visualize the pace of your plot.
3. Try to leave the house sometimes.
4. Take a break between the first and second drafts. Even if you think you’re on a roll and should keep up the momentum, you are going to want to die in about a week.
5. Start the new draft with a clean document, rather than saving a copy of the previous draft and making changes to it. If there are sections that aren’t getting rewritten, then copy/paste them from the old draft to the new one in SMALL chunks. This forces you to actually look at what you’re putting in, and keeps you from glossing over it.
Wednesday Funny
Jul 28, 2010
Yeah, so it’s not alliterative, but frankly, don’t you need funny on Wednesday more than Friday?
Anyway, I should have more writing/revision-related posts soon, but in the meantime I wanted to pass this along to the rest of you. Tor posted a new SF advice column that is absolutely HILARIOUS. (Full disclosure: the writing and art are done by two friends of mine, so I MIGHT be biased… but I really don’t think I am.) I hope you’ll all go check it out, and if you like it, leave a comment there to that effect, to let Tor know it’s worth having again.
Tor.com — Word to the Wired: Personal Advice, Science Fiction Style
“Paranormalcy” ARC Giveaway Contest at LTWF
Jul 20, 2010
I rarely (i.e. never) pass along contests here, but given that most of you already read Let The Words Flow anyway, I don’t think it’ll be tooooo big an annoyance. 😉 And if you AREN’T reading LTWF, you should be!
Anyway, they’re having a giveaway of the ARC of PARANORMALCY, a book I’ve been dying to read ever since I heard
So without further ado, here’s the contest. Good luck!
Now I can die happy!
Jul 16, 2010
Today The Rejectionist passed along a seeeerious time-waster, but as it’s probably not quite as much of a time-waster as the Wordle thing, I figure it’s safe to pass it on to you guys. Basically, you paste in a chunk of text (as with Wordle) and the program analyzes it and compares it to a bunch of authors and figures out who you write like. It is the MOST ACCURATE thing I have EVER SEEN, because look:
Apparently, THE IRON WOOD could have been written by Margaret Atwood! And look at this, when I input text from this blog, I get:
(Note: Okay, so maybe my blog isn’t exactly H.P. Lovecraft. And maybe that means the first one is not exactly accurate either. No, scratch that. It is TOTALLY ACCURATE. *clings with deathgrip to comparison to Margaret Atwood.)
What sorts of writers do you guys get?
Correspondence from the Front: Revision update
Jul 15, 2010
I’ve gotten off to a rather rocky start with my revision process. I suppose it’s only fair, because when I started writing the first draft I got through the first 30,000 words of it almost without a hitch–it’s about time I hit some speed bumps. Part of the problem has come from outside the writing sphere–I got the mother of all migraines this past weekend, landing me in the ER for treatment and then unable to look at a computer screen for more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time for a couple days. Mostly I’ve been rewriting the first chapter over and over, until I got to the point where I started feeling a bit like a broken record just skipping through the same words over and over again, stuck in that one groove.
Everything is better when it’s in rainbow!
Jul 07, 2010
I spent my weekend (and my birthday… and the two days since my birthday…) outlining my first draft of THE IRON WOOD. Granted, I have had some other things to do, like go out to dinner with my friends on my birthday, and attempt to go see the Tim Burton exhibit downtown today only to be turned away by the huuuuge line, and console ourselves with hot chocolate (such a terrible fate!). But mostly I have been outlining.
This is something I do not really do much of. I’ve always been a write-by-the-seat-of-my-pants person, and tend to rebel against outlining on principle. That said, I recently learned the post-it technique from my writing group back in the U.S., which is made up of Odyssey workshop grads. It was so helpful for the people who used it that I had to try it myself.
On kangaroos, markets, and Tim Tams.
Jul 03, 2010
It occurred to me this morning that while I’ve been talking endlessly about writing, my WIP, the publishing world, etc., I haven’t actually blogged yet about living in Australia, which is probably one of the more interesting things I could talk about. So here goes.
One of the reasons I haven’t really talked much about it is because for me, right now, it’s not all that different from living in the U.S. except that my family can’t turn up unexpectedly (which is both good and bad), and when I wake up in the morning there’s about a thousand unread tweets because most of the people I know live while I’m asleep (which is both good and bad). It’s winter here, which doesn’t mean much to those of us who are used to needing kitty litter, a ski lift, and a lot of hoping to get up our driveways in the winter. It doesn’t get that cold here, but it does get chilly, rainy, and windy, a combination which makes it rather unpleasant to be outside most days. So the weather is pretty conducive to huddling up indoors, and because I’ve been voluntarily huddling to finish my book, it’s been a pretty good arrangement.
Team Players
Jun 30, 2010
The other day I posted a comment on a blog that was seriously misinterpreted. It had the unfortunate timing of showing up right after another comment, so close in fact that I didn’t see the other comment before I posted–but coincidence made it possible to read criticism into my comment, because of its placement. I was mortified when the first commenter wrote back defending herself against this perceived attack, so I tracked her down and sent her an email explaining things. She turned out to be really nice and understanding, and not at all the kind of super-aware, oversensitive type I had been expecting, which got me thinking: what is it that prompts normal, healthy people to be so on guard for perceived attacks from all quarters?
And with a week to spare…
Jun 28, 2010
…I’ve finished the first draft of The Iron Wood!
I have to say I’m pretty excited and happy and all of those things. Yes, I cried when I finished, as I was pretty sure I would, but then I had cake and a block of chocolate and a cup of tea and I was all smiles.
I’ll have a longer post tomorrow or the day after, once I’ve figured out what to do next. During the rewriting and revision process, it doesn’t really seem appropriate to have the same 500 word/day metric, just because words per day doesn’t reflect the work I’m doing. Not everything will need complete rewriting–so how do I score revision? Anyway, I may end up doing a certain amount of time per day, I’m not really sure. For now I am taking the teensiest of breaks, and tonight I don’t care in the slightest about what I will do in the morning.
SO THERE.
Twists and Surprises
Jun 25, 2010
Well, the book is coming along, and I’m anticipating finishing the first draft long before my self-imposed deadline. Yeah, it’s as much a shock to me as to anyone else, trust me. But for some reason, the act of setting myself a public deadline (and opening myself up to judgment should I fail to meet it) seems to have lit an even bigger fire under me. I expect this tactic wouldn’t keep working if I used it all the time, but clearly it’s a good tool to pull out on special occasions.
Just a quick update on that, for those keeping track. Mostly I have questions for you! And these are for writers and readers alike, because I think sometimes we as writers tend to get our perceptions of books muddled by the fact that we’re so interested in studying craft. We start looking for the complex answers when sometimes it’s the simple ones, the ones we’d have picked if we weren’t so obsessive, that are the most helpful.
So what I want to hear from you about is the subject of plot twists, secrets, shockers, and tricks. I’m getting to the end of my own book, and there are a few twists and reveals that (if I’ve done it correctly) should come as a surprise to the reader. I think, though, that twists are really hard to write. Something you’ll see a lot of in magazine’s requirements for short story submissions is that they don’t want stories with trick endings or big twists. I think this is because they’re often done so poorly, with a lot of handwaving and blatant prose that is the equivalent of the author popping out of a corner with a big sign saying “GOTCHA!” You want to be thrilled and excited and shocked–not prompted to roll your eyes and groan, like you’ve just been handed a bad pun.
One of the things I learned at the Odyssey Workshop, which falls under the category of Things I Knew Instinctively But Couldn’t Articulate, was that endings should be surprising but inevitable. Meaning, the ending should not be easily predicted through the book, and still surprise the reader, but in hindsight the reader should be able to look back and see that all the clues were there, making the ending inevitable. It’s like a good murder mystery–you don’t really want to get there long before the detective does, but you don’t want to feel like the solution came out of nowhere.
Think back over the books you’ve read, either recently or in the long distant past, that had twists in them–which ones worked? Which ones didn’t? (Try to avoid major spoilers, just in case they’re books that other people haven’t read and might some day!) Did you feel betrayed by the author, or did you get that rush of “Oh my god, this is the BEST THING EVER!” that a good twist can give you? And why?