Didn't Mean To Leave You Hanging ....

I'm going to try to keep this short in an attempt to keep myself from babbling. The second thing that sparked revelations was a book titled See Jane Write. It's a guide to writing chick lit (which after reading the book I am convinced is not what I'm writing .... I still don't know what genre Adeline's .... THING ... is, but I'm pretty sure it's not straight forward chick lit).

On the whole, it was really fun but not exactly helpful. There were a lot of good suggestions .... for someone who is thinking about writing a book but hasn't taken the leap yet. Which is not the point I'm at. I would still recommend it though. And I did like it a lot (as evidenced by the five hour reading time) so I would definitely say it wasn't a complete wash.

But there were a couple things that I read that made me feel really good especially after the rather disappointing critique. (Ok, it wasn't that disappointing but I had harbored secret hopes that she would tell me, "There's nothing I can do for this! It's perfect." *snorts* Yeah ... I know. But you're talking to a lady who wants to be the queen of Newfoundland. When I go for delusions of grandeur, I don't just do some piddling gradeur; I go all the way.) The first thing that made me do a little wiggle in my chair was when I read a section about how to get your project finished. It suggested a 500 word count goal for every day. That led to a completion date about six months from the start. One of the authors brought up that she had a 3000 word count goal; that way, she could be finished in six weeks. The other asked if that had ever actually happened (since 3000 words is a BIG count). *grins* Author #1 admitted it hadn't. I'll share with y'all that I happened to say, "Try FOUR WEEKS. Oh yeah baby!" before I continued to read. (Although, to be completely fair, I didn't get 90,000 in 4 weeks which is what she would have had in 6 if she did 3000 a day. *blinks* Trust me, that sounds odd, but the math is solid.)

The second thing I liked .... When I got to the editing section, a lot of it was stuff that's second nature to me. Being an English major does have its uses! Who knew? *grins* Now, to be fair, I'm FAR from perfect. I've got notations to myself that are reminders to work on my choice of verbs. (Although, seriously, sometimes you just need to break from the flowery speech and have a good ol' fashioned "She was angry" type sentence no matter who simplistic and unimpressive it is!) And, even though I try to vary my word usage, the starts of my sentences, sentence length, dialogue tags, and other "stuff" (*grins*) like that, I got to the point where I didn't care so long as there were words appearing on the screen.

But ... the third thing ... .the thing I liked best of all .... was concerning revising after you finish. They proposed that you walk away from your manscript. Give yourself a break. *blinks then sighs* By the time I finished writing it, I was so blessed sick of the darned thing. I took a break over the holidays then got back to it for a bit, but to tell you the truth, any time I think about it, I cringe. Which is never good. So I'm walking away!

Oh, but that doesn't save you from me. Ohhhhhh no. Because as soon as I finished, Adeline disappeared into the mist then appeared at the edges tugging on a slim, pale wrist. Seems as how she's decided this is a perfect time for me to start Camilla's story. *grins* I knew almost from the beginning I would be writing Camilla and Scot's story next, but I never thought it would be this soon.

I sat down today and started a conversation with Camilla. I asked her about herself, because while I knew her fairly well, at least well enough to have her appear in the THING and be confident about her voice, I don't know the details. For example, I was surprised to learn she was raised by an uncle and auntish figure rather than her parents. Who knew? Anyway, the conversation was enlightening especially when I managed to gag Adeline so she wouldn't interrupt ... (*rolls eyes* ..... I asked Camilla what her favorite curse was ... just because ... and from the darkness comes the reply "Flying fu**ing feathers!" There was a long pause before I realized the tones were more Adeline's than Camilla. ..... that was about the time the gag came into play).

Tomorrow, I'm going to track down the elusive Scot and see what he has to say for himself.

PS - I almost lost the last half of this post due to Blogger's *pauses to take a deep breath to keep from MASSACRING the silly thing ... exhales* stupidity. Hmm, since I thought instead of reacting, maybe I really am maturing. ACK! Quick! Run away! I've got to throw a temper tantrum to scare of adulthood.