I apologize for taking so much time off from Choices. My temporary day job has been exhausting and as such has given me little time or energy to write here. However, I'll be free of it early next week and look forward to getting back to my writing work. That said I attended a rewrite seminar last weekend to hopefully help me get revved up to work on my novel after a long hiatus working a proposal management consulting job. Some of the contents of the seminar were familiar I learned a lot about rewrite and revision while working proposals in the aerospace business and some things discussed gave me some new nuggets to incorporate in my work. Here I'll try to give you ways to tackle your own drafts. The two-step process for writing a book are: Step 1 write the draft Just get it out Don't hang up with editing Don't go to the Thesaurus to find a word. Lay all your cards on the table as fast as you can. And avoid tendency to write in chronological … [Read more...]
Ageism doesn’t apply
I'm Going Back to Work I wasn't looking for consulting work when I retired in April 2010 at the age of seventy. I was intent on working as a creative writer rather than a technical writer and proposal manager. For me it was either now or never. And I succeeded. In the last four and a half years I had my memoir published, I've written for several websites, I've written poems for two books of photography, and co-edited three poetry anthologies. Now I'm knee deep in revising my first novel. So really I have no time to work a day job, as they like to say. Actually, in the last couple of years I worked a couple of short-term consulting jobs helping a group of engineers write proposals to the U.S. government. And it was easy-going back. I found that once I walked in the door I got into the swing of the work immediately. It was like I'd never been gone. Of course after doing the kind of work I did for almost thirty years, I shouldn't have had any doubt that I could still … [Read more...]