Monthly Archives: December 2013

Dec
27

Waiting Game

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There’s a certain sort of elation when it comes to finishing up a draft – usually followed by a few hours of bliss and then a period of “Now what?” Or in my case, I get to fight off a nasty cold. Usually it’s a combination of burning the candle at both ends and “let down.” (AKA my body going into relaxation mode after a period of extreme mental exertion. Plus Lucy had a cold/flu thing this past weekend, and I seem to have picked it up. Eh.) But as I mentioned in my previous post, even though a draft may be “finished,” it never really is.  In this case, I wrapped up the edited draft at about 140k and then cut about 6k off of it, just searching for word echoes and repeating phrases and the like. I’m still not completely happy with the ending, but I know at… Read more
Dec
17

Lost in Rewrites

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There’s this question that writers tend to get often – how do you know when a story is finished? And the short answer is that it’s never finished. Not really. (It’s partially why I don’t go back and read my own books, to be honest. I always find places where I’d really like to go and change things. Maybe small things. Maybe big ones. Doesn’t matter, though – once that manuscript is off and done, that’s pretty much it.) That being said, I’ve been working on this new book. New project. Whatever it is. And I’ve mentioned it  here and there on this site and the Word Whores blog from time to time. I’m late with it. It should have been done months ago – so I tend to feel a lot of guilt that it isn’t.  (Blah blah, draft done in April, two surgeries and painkillers and just overall… Read more