Monday, March 3, 2008

Monday, March 3, 2008
Waning Moon
Saturn Retrograde
Cloudy and mild

I took it easy this weekend. I took Saturday off. I didn’t realize how exhausted I was from dealing with building crap last week. I managed to finish reading the books for the essay on Saturday. My eyes are tired, but now I have to think about everything for a bit before embarking on it.

Sunday, I had a leisurely morning reading the newspaper and playing with the cats. Then, I did some work on the assignment for Confidential Job #1 – it’s due in a few days and I hadn’t even started.

But most of the day was spent on Tracking Medusa. I got the last set of comments back from the last reader. Extremely helpful. I’m delighted that the small paragraphs I hoped to get away with were not mentioned by any of the three readers, so that means I got away with it! It was also helpful to see which character choices pushed buttons for people – there’s a wide enough range so that everything I wanted to hit in a specific way has hit one of the three, which is what I wanted. And all the readers are interested in and protective of the protagonists, which means I’ve done something right.

AND they caught my bad habits and typos. I’m still horrified by how many typos I missed. As I work back through the manuscript, I’ve picked up a few minor inconsistencies that I’m fixing, and I’m clarifying a couple of things that needed to be crisper. I’m doing some internal cuts, adding a few lines here and there, but it’s mostly tweaking, not major revisions. I’m still not happy with the outline and the synopsis, but I’ll just keep working on it. Once I have a version that doesn’t make me want to puke, I may send it to a few people for comments. I do not post my outlines or synopsis for critiques on writing boards because the way it’s done in open critique doesn’t work for me. I’ve been very specific in the past saying, “tell me what doesn’t work, Do NOT rewrite it.” And what do they do? Rewrite the piece in their voice, which doesn’t serve MY work. Rewriting someone else’s synopsis or outline REALLY doesn’t work unless you’ve read the manuscript and know it almost as well as the writer. So I send it to people I trust, people who will tell me what doesn’t work and why without rewriting it into something that has nothing to do with the actual novel.

It’s quiet here this morning. Too quiet. That means the scumbags are up to something.

However, I’m off to CT to do laundry, so too bad for them.

I’m sort of participating in the March Writing Challenge, where one can write 50K in the month on numerous projects. I’m not counting my edits in that, just fresh work.

Had a good morning’s work on both Old-Fashioned Detective Work and the sci-fi horror western. The latter is going too slowly and really needs a title. Hopefully, I can do some more work on it tonight. I need 15K on it by next week, and then I’ve got to edit before I can send it off.

Devon

Old-Fashioned Detective Work – 21,135 words out of est. 25,000 (84%)

Sci-fi horror western – 2,484 words out of 15,000 (16%)

March Writing Challenge – 2,695 words out of 50,000 (5.3%)

Devon’s Bookstore:

5 in 10: Create 5 Short Stories in Ten Weeks by Devon Ellington. This ebooklet takes you from inspiration to writing to revision to marketing. By the end of ten weeks, you will have either 5 short stories or a good chunk of a novella complete. And it’s only 50 cents, USD. Here.

Writing Rituals: Ideas to Support Creativity by Cerridwen Iris Shea. This ebooklet contains several rituals to help you start writing, get you through writer’s block, and help send your work on its way. It’s only 39 cents USD. (Note: Cerridwen Iris Shea is one of the six names under which I publish). Here.

Full Circle: An Ars Concordia Anthology. Edited by Colin Galbraith. This is a collection of short stories, poems, and other pieces by a writers’ group of which I am a member. My story is “Pauvre Bob”, set at Arlington Race Track in Illinois. You can download it free here: