I'm a little late getting started this year. Two much movie going I guess. Last week we saw three more movies: The Big Short, Concussion, and Brooklyn. All great I'd give them all an A. But now it's time to get back to work. I told myself I guess the word is resolved to open up my novel again and see if I can bring it back to life. I put it aside at the end of last April when I went to work my consulting job in Colorado and sent it off to several beta readers. I was also devastated by one particularly scathing review that literally stopped me in my tracks. But, enough is enough. I've put a lot of work into that book. I cannot just throw it all out. I was also encouraged by the movie Brooklyn. Like my novel it's about immigrating to America. Of course our stories are very different but it makes me feel that immigration stories are still alive and well not like the scathing reviewer said. Plus there are several boarding house scenes in the movie that are great role … [Read more...]
Another novel character revealed
I've been missing my characters while my novel is in the eyes and hands of my beta readers. So I thought I'd share another one of the four main characters with you. I've patterned this character after my father, who in the novel is: Charles: son of Ira and Ruth Schuman. Ava Schuman's older brother Name Chaim/Charles/Charlie Benjamin Schuman He appears as a little boy in the beginning. Physical appearance: As a grownup he is short only 5 ft, 7 in. (only an inch taller than his father), slim, has dark curly hair lots of it, very large brown eyes, olive complexion. Looks great in a business suit and tie. Wears rimless glasses Learns English very quickly while he is on the ship coming over from Poland. Speaks pretty much without an accent though has trouble pronouncing Vs The deaths of his little brothers nag at him. He is very protective of his little sister and mother and father as a result. A good brother and son Very inquisitive and outgoing. He goes to college … [Read more...]
Draft five of my novel is with five beta readers
Last June I sent Draft Four of my novel-in-progress to five beta readers. This past Sunday I did it again. I sent Draft Five to five different beta readers. I also sent the manuscript to one of the first five beta readers and asked her to let me know if she thinks I created any damage as a result of all the cuts, changes, and rewrites I made to this latest draft - to comply with current guidelines for lengths of novels, I cut almost 9000 words. Hopefully, I left enough in tact that I didn't ruin anything. However, I have a safety net. I have saved every single draft of my novel. I can always add something back in if necessary. You can probably tell from the above, I consider getting my novel out in public both scary and exciting. However, it gives me a much-needed break from it. I've asked my readers to send me their comments by June 30 or sooner, so now I have time to blog, write some new poetry (I plan to participate in Robert Lee Brewer's April Poem A Day Challenge … [Read more...]
Writing work check-up
On January 5, 2015, I wrote a short writing to-do list for the coming few months. Today, since it's almost the end of January, is a good time to take stock. I'm pleased to report that I'm moving right along on my novel revisions. I've incorporated my red lines and yellow highlights into my online Revision 4 chapter files up to page 124. That means I have only 54 single-spaced hard-copy pages to go. Of course that doesn't mean that I'm finished finished. As I've revised I've tagged many many pages that I need to go back to. Like yesterday for instance. I was working on Chapter Seventeen which required that I add a new subsection at the chapter's end. I wrote it. I stepped back from it, I thought about how John Updike writes incredibly detailed descriptions, and I realized I wrote only the bare bones so far. I need to go back to that little subsection and add and add and add more. Remember the old adage - show don't tell? Well my bare bones only tell. I haven't written the … [Read more...]
Time to build a new version (Revision 6) of my novel
After going over a hard copy of my novel three times: once to find too much telling and not enough showing, once to address my beta readers comments, and once to improve my verbs change as many to be verbs to action verbs and improve the actions verbs that already existed I took the marked up copy of my novel off the wall. Amazing! After having the book on my storyboards for almost three months, it took me just thirty-five minutes to take it down, remove the push pins, and carry the foam boards into my garage. My next step is to start incorporating all of my mark ups into a new version. That means inputting any editorial changes I made with my trusty red pen, deleting material that I highlighted with my yellow marker, and adding chapters and sections where indicated again with my red pen. However, I'm going to give myself a couple of days off to let the enormity of the upcoming task sink in. I'll be back at it on Monday, hopefully creating a new version that will be good … [Read more...]
The gratitude challenge
My Facebook friend, Dorothy Sander, invited me to take the five-day gratitude challenge and I accepted. That means for each of five days I need to post three things I'm grateful for and invite three people to join the challenge. This was a real challenge for me because I don't normally think about my life in terms of gratitude - especially in a list. I've thought of benefits and gifts that have come my way. I also very much appreciate my family and friends who have stuck with me through some extremely tough times. So it's not as though I'm ungrateful. I just found it hard to put the words down. Even so, I have completed my list of fifteen. Three went up on my Facebook timeline yesterday, three went up today, and I will post the rest in the next three days. My Grateful List For being with my godson Hugo and his brother Oscar and their mum and grandmum this morning. We got to show 4-year old Oscar the paleontology exhibit at the Page Museum and the La Brea Tar Pits. What a … [Read more...]
Five reasons to be in a writing group
I joined a writing group a couple of years ago. It's called The Last Sunday Writers because we usually meet the last Sunday of the month. Today's meeting was cancelled because of lack of a quorum. Only two of us plus our leader planned to attend, and we weren't prepared to read this month. So what's the point? I usually want to read at the meetings, but I'm still a little traumatized from the feedback from my novel beta readers. I need to give putting myself out there a rest for a while. However, I'm very glad I was invited to join. I had known several people in the group because we attended workshops together. Or if we hadn't met before we had worked with the some of the same writing instructors in the past. So we are a well-knit group with similar goals: continue to write, get feedback from our fellow writers, and network. Five things I like about being in a writing group are: It encourages me to prepare a piece for review once a month: this can be a new essay, story, poem, … [Read more...]
The storyboards are going up again
Once I get comments and critiques back from my first round of beta readers hopefully by mid July I'll start revising again. Here's my process. 1. Take my reviewer's suggestions as just that -- suggestions. I feel it is important for an author to stay in control of his/her book. So I will review each comment and make decisions on whether to incorporate my readers' notes or not into my next revision. If I decide not to use a comment, I'll file it away for future reference should the need arise I never throw anything away. The bottom line - I am the person with the last red pen. 2. Create a revision plan. One of the first lessons I learned from my 28-year job editing and rewriting proposals to the U.S. Government was to plan before doing. And that's what I intend to do at this point. I will create a revision plan based on my readers' notes especially if major changes are suggested and if those changes affect many parts of the book. 3. Post a hard copy of my book on … [Read more...]
How to write a novel
I was smitten with the following photo that pranced around Facebook yesterday courtesy of Melissa Foster. It makes the writing of a novel seem so simple and the deterrents to writing a novel so easy to solve. I've been working on my novel for about four years off and on. I revised and got my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On, published in the meantime, and I spend a lot of time every day marketing it. However, I don't let any of that take away from my writing time and my commitment to my novel. What I want to do is to briefly comment on the photo I've shared here and let you know where I am in my novel's process. Think up a story I was fortunate to have a story fall into my lap from my aunt's lifestory writing, and when I presented the idea at my first novel-writing workshop, it was very readily accepted. I've, of course, fictionalized her true story, making up characters, dialogue, events, and locales. However, I've tried very hard to be historically accurate about … [Read more...]
Getting into revision
I took a workshop in novel revision last February and began my revision work in full force in March. My first job was to make sure every chapter was complete. In many cases I found I needed to add descriptions, research details, and dialogue, Once I did that, I could finally say I had a complete novel draft ready to be revised. That became revision 1 which I collected in a computer folder called 02. Novel Chapters.Then, as advised in the workshop, I printed out a hard copy of the entire draft and read it through, taking notes in a notebook not on the draft material itself to indicate what fixes I thought I needed to make. I also took a couple of detours. I inserted the Prologue into Chapter One and changed the tense in that chapter from present to past. However, I still haven't yet decided to keep or integrate the Prologue into the main text and/or to change the entire novel into past tense. Hopefully my beta readers will advise me on that. At this point I'm working through my … [Read more...]
