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...]

Company is coming

Tomorrow starts a series of guest blog appearances by author's touring through WOW Women on Writing. I'm so looking forward to you getting to know these authors and reading their books. Here's the line up for August: Elizabeth Maria Naranjo, author of her first novel, The Fourth Wall (August 4) Page Strickland, author of Akin to the Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity (August 11) Lorraine Ash, author of Self and Soul: On Creating A Meaningful Life (August 20) Please come back tomorrow to read Elizabeth's post about the benefits of publishing with a small press. … [Read more...]

The blog-a-day-challenge is over

  Today is the last day of my self-inflicted July blog-a-day challenge. You can probably hear me breathing a sigh of relief as I look out my office window. Though I'm glad I achieved my goal - there were many times in the month when I was tempted to call it off - I'm happy to tell you that I'm not ever going to do that to myself again. Here's why: Thinking up a blog subject thirty-one days in a row is hard. As a result I know my posts were repetitive and sometimes uninteresting. I should have asked more writing friends to make guest appearances to help mix it up a bit. It was time-consuming. It took me more time to decide on a post subject than it took to write about the subject. It put unneeded pressure on me. What did I need that for? Well, I decided on this scheme while I was waiting for comments on my novel from my group of beta readers. I felt I needed another activity to keep me busy. I was definitely wrong about that. I also pressured myself not … [Read more...]