Once again, I’m hunkered down, making revisions. Once again, I spy a light at the end of the tunnel. I know I’ve said this about a dozen times, but I’ve entered the homestretch and man, does it feel good!
So forgive the sparseness of my posts of late. I hope to be back to something approaching normal sometime soon. 🙂
(c) 2012. All rights reserved.
So I’ve been proofreading my novel before sending it out into the wide world on a full request from a query. It’s a good thing, too, because last night, on the verge of sleep, I found a large, economy-sized error. This was the kind of error that made me cringe in terror, the kind of error that, had I not found it prior to sending out my manuscript, would have caused me to actually pull hair out of my head. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the stuff of which nightmares are made.
This error was more than a little typo, more than a minor spellcheck oversight. I had done some major rearranging of text and failed to delete the redundancies at one point, but then thought I had it all taken care of. I happily went about printing off my final hard copy and set to reading through it, making a note of each instance where something needed to be fixed (and I’m not talking about instances where I decided that something sounded better if I wrote it differently – I’m talking about instances like where I said witting instead of sitting or considering when I meant consider).
Then I discovered that Chapter 13 needed to be deleted.
Not just a portion of it, oh, no. The whole thing had to go. I was falling asleep reading because I was absolutely exhausted, yet I was awake enough to realize that I had just read the opening to Chapter 13 ten minutes earlier…in Chapter 11. I flipped quickly through Chapter 13, then back through the three preceding chapters and discovered that Chapter 13 contained parts of Chapters 10, 11, and 12. Talk about en epic facepalm.
Prior to this discovery, I’d been considering just winging the whole proofing bit. I knew there were a couple of places that I needed to hammer out a bit more, but I thought that once I got those straightened out, I could probably just give it a rest and then send it on in. Boy, am I glad I talked myself out of that idea! Part of me is really anxious to get this whole proofing project done with because I’m impatient, but fortunately the logical side of me is louder and knows that I need to take my time and do it right. Yay logic! 🙂
And now, back to the grindstone. I’ve got some more polishing to do.
(c) 2012. All rights reserved.
Photo by Kay Kauffman
We can be the heroes and heroines in our own lives. We can set out upon a quest. We can write our own stories, and within those tales, discover something extraordinary. We can have an extraordinary life. -Tricia Drammeh
I read that about an hour ago and was inspired. This post almost didn’t get published today, but I’ve still got ten more minutes to go before the weekend is officially here and I think I can make it! Anyway, Tricia is a wonderful lady and I highly recommend visiting her blog, where you can find the rest of the post that I quoted above.
Anyway, it’s late, I’m tired, I’ve got boatloads of work to do, and I’ve recently become addicted to Pottermore. If you’re there, let’s be friends! I’m SkyKey6037 and just got sorted into Hufflepuff tonight, so that was pretty cool, although I have to admit I was hoping for either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. Oh, well.
And now, to the writing cave! Happy weekend, y’all!
(c) 2012. All rights reserved.
After a weekend spent mostly offline, I have finally almost caught up with everything that happened online over the weekend. I still have a ton of reading to catch up on, but other than that, I think I’ve managed to update myself on all things social. Maybe.
Zzzz.
I seem to be suffering from some serious sleep deprivation, though, as I can barely keep my eyes open. I barricaded myself in my room over the weekend with the a/c, my writing supplies, no internet, and plenty of caffeine so that I could get some work done on The Lokana Chronicles. My wonderful Seymour kindly took care of Cricket and Thumper and left me alone for the better part of 48 hours, but sadly, I didn’t accomplish nearly as much as I wanted. I made lots of progress, I just didn’t meet my goal, which was admittedly steep.
But! I feel like the progress I did make will vastly improve the story and it really felt wonderful to be writing again. Aside from blogging, I haven’t done much writing lately and I’ve missed it. It was mentally exhausting trying to figure out how to flesh out my story without making it seem like I was just throwing in a lot of filler, but the results are worth it, in my humble opinion (at least, I hope so).
And now, I must be getting back to the grindstone. My posts may be a bit more sporadic over the next couple of weeks; between revising The Lokana Chronicles and preparing for our next family camping adventure (coming this weekend to a campground near you!), I will be offline quite a bit for the next little while. But don’t worry – I’ll make sure to fill you in on all the adventures we have, as I’m sure there will be plenty!
Have a great week!
(c) 2012. All rights reserved.
You know, I’ve had something brewing in the back of my mind for quite a while now as a blog topic and some of the posts I’ve been reading lately on T.L. Tyson’s blog have more or less cemented the idea in my head. However, I’m not sure it’s fully fermented yet and at any rate, I received an email over my lunch break that pretty much blew said idea sky-high. Any thoughts I might have otherwise entertained posting about today were blown to smithereens when I read the following words:
…I’d love to see the whole thing…
I sat down to work on this post last night after a hectic couple of hours and ended up reading the news on msnbc.com instead. Whoops.
Anyway, I read a fantastic post the other day on Kristen Lamb’s blog about taking time to rest and how there is a season to everything under the sun. Yes, I know Ecclesiastes says the exact same thing, but Ms. Lamb said it in regards to writing by quoting the Byrds and the song “Turn, Turn, Turn.” By the way, I love that song. The melody is beautiful and would be playing in my head were it not for whatever is playing on the radio and distracting me (I know the song, I just can’t think of its name – “Angel Eyes” perhaps? – and I couldn’t tell you who sings it for the life of me). The comparisons she draws between farming and writing are obvious, yet they’d never occurred to me before (despite having grown up in America’s breadbasket, where I still currently live). Her words struck a particular chord with me as I’ve been dealing with quite a lot of guilt lately concerning a variety of tasks that seem to go undone despite my best intentions to accomplish them. To everything there is a season (turn, turn, turn)…
My book list, to be updated regularly (I hope):
Books I’m currently reading:
Books I’ve finished:
I got a new toy yesterday. It’s a Samsung Tab 2. It’s just like my phone, only bigger and better (except for the lack of 3G, that is).
Anyway, Seymour and I made a deal a couple of months back – he could get a new toy if I could and yesterday, I finally procured said toy. I’ve been playing around with it after downloading a bunch of apps last night and I think I love it. Sure, I would have adored an Asus Slider or Transformer, but I’ve had good luck with my two Samsung phones and the Asus tablets were out of my price range.
Seymour was astonished when I told him what I wanted. “You want an e-reader?!” he exclaimed. “I thought you hated them!” And therein lies my dilemma.
My noon hour yesterday was much like many other noon hours at my day job. I grabbed my computer, my wallet, and headed down the street to the local café-type establishment to quiet the beast inside (because yes, my stomach is a snarling, ferocious beast, foaming at the mouth as it waits, ever-impatient, for the victuals that will eventually slide into its gaping maw). I took a seat, ordered my food, and withdrew my laptop from its handy-dandy carrying case to work on my story (and when that failed, to at least continue looking over one of five samples sent to me by a friend for some vicious red-penning). As I was trying to solve a major plot problem (Ha!), a conversation caught my ear. One of the waiters was discussing writing with the gal in the booth behind me. He is a college student majoring in English; she is one of many people who have written a book, only to (likely) have it remain unseen by the masses, covered in dust, and taking up space in her home. “But I sent it to so-and-so – he writes Christian books, you know – and he thought it was very good!” she proclaimed to half the bar, the waiter, and me.
Ignoring the woman, I asked the waiter what he enjoyed writing and what he wanted to do as a writer. He was where my interest lay because he is at that point in his life where he still has the world at his fingertips and anything is possible. Sure, anything is always possible, but at 28 with a husband and four kids, it’s not likely that I’ll be able to study abroad and learn French through immersion or spend a summer backpacking through Germany absorbing local culture anymore. Anyway, he replied that he had wanted to be a novelist and he liked sci-fi, but that he’d been fighting depression and not writing as prolifically as he’d done before. I mentioned that I’d just finished a fantasy novel and that my own depression had made me want to lock myself in my room to write. Naturally, this piqued the woman’s interest, so she turned her curiosity away from the waiter and onto me. “I’m sorry, what do you do?” Click here to find out!
Well, the old adage rang true this year – March came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. A sheared lamb, but a lamb nevertheless. It was supposed to be in the mid-70s yesterday, but I don’t think it even reached 60°. Thank goodness I had the kids dressed warm when we left to run errands. The day was mostly cloudy, but at least it wasn’t raining.
The last few days have seen quite a surge in views here, which has me pretty excited. I don’t know what it is that’s attracting so many lovely visitors (aside from posting more regularly than I have in a long while), but whatever it is, I’ll try to keep doing it. Formatting guidelines and what one publishing house had to say are this-a-way!
Suddenly they all died. The end. 