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Meta
Tag Archives: writing
Sep
2
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back…
One of the fun things about writing is backtracking. Not really. And this isn’t a case of backtracking so much as reworking. Although I had about 40 k written of book 2 some time last year, a good deal of it has needed to be revamped a bit to fit with all the changes in book 1. Which is fine, except that for every 1000 words I seem to write, I get stuck yanking out about 500 somewhere else. The good news is that some of those yanked bits will be able to be put back in a little later on. The better news is that I’m getting to the end of the old stuff, so pretty soon it should nearly all be new stuff. It’s just a little frustrating to be busting my hump to write a minimum of 1500 – 2000 words a day, just to watch the…
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Aug
24
Slang a Lang a Ding Dong
Seeing as I’m home with a sick kid today, just a quick post about another writing resource dealing with language. It’s very similar to the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, but in some ways it’s much better laid out. DotVT is essentially just that – a dictionary, which makes it a little hard if you’re looking for something specific. Slang Down the Ages is actually set up in chapters. There’s the usual suspects, dealing with sex, male and female body parts, bodily functions and insults – but there’s also some great stuff about different types of food, speech, clothing, death and some of the more common types of jobs (including prostitution). Now, a small word of warning – there are several chapters dealing with different ethnic groups and sexual orientations. A lot of it is offensive to the more modern day sensibilities – although I suppose that’s pretty much the point when it…
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Aug
12
Winds of Change
By now there probably aren’t too many people in the pub world that aren’t aware of what’s going on over at Dorchester. And I’m not really planning on discussing all the sordid details – the pros and the cons of epubbing or if this move is truly an act of desperation vs a bold maneuver into the future. There are plenty of other places out there that have raging debates on the topic: Jim Hines Smart Bitches Dear Author JA Konrath And regardless of what the outcome is, no one can say the move isn’t polarizing. And of course, everyone feels terribly for the authors, most of whom were completely blindsided by the news – some of them had books that were scheduled to be released next month. And now? *poof* Or ebook only. As to the rest of it, I’m not entirely sure. Everyone seems to be clamoring in…
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Aug
10
Word Crunching
I’ve been woefully neglectful of my wordcount sidebars there for a while. *cough*. Like probably at least six months. On the other hand, I haven’t been writing as much as I might otherwise. The sheer amount of work with the copyedits/revisions/rewrites and all the rest of it have left me a bit of a mental vegetable. I’ll admit there’s a part of me that thinks if I were a better writer or just a better person, I would somehow have manged to continue writing additional stuff all this time, but you know, I can only do so much. And of course, in the case of Shadow Weaver, I had to wait and see how Brush of Darkness turned out before I could pick back up with it. And I have, finally. It’s a little slow, at the moment, since I have to pull apart some of the plot points to…
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Aug
7
Success
I stayed up until just past 2 AM last night to finish up my copyedits. Which is pretty awesome, really. Now I just have to mail them off so they get to the publisher by Tuesday and then I write like mad for the next few months to get that second book done. (And thanks to my detailed outline, I’ve got a vague idea of where I’m going. *cough*) Anyway, I was pondering this morning on the meaning of success. Clearly everyone has different goals and different definitions of the term. Plus I suspect one’s personal interpretation changes as you go through life. After all, if you actually manage to accomplish your goal, then thee’s nothing left but to continue setting the bar higher, right? I sort of work within that metaphor for getting pubbed. When I was an aspiring author, getting an agent was the thing…and then the publishing deal. Now…
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