Sunday, March 16, 2008
Spring has sprung
Slightly new look for spring. I get bored easily. And distracted too. Back to the revision.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Dilemma
My crit partner is a fellow writer. I value and respect her judgement, and her comments have helped me make ASF a better and stronger book.
My reader is not a writer. I value and respect his judgement, and his comments have helped me make ASF a better and stronger book.
BUT... there are some scenes where their advice is diametrically opposed. Examples:
Scene A
She says it pulled her out of the book, the action wasn't believable
He says it was and it was very exciting.
Scene B
She says I can cut a lot of the stuff because it slows the action. The level of detail is too much.
He says he could really see what was happening and loved it.
Scene C
She doesn't like one piece of description.
He says it was great.
Which just goes to show that you can't please all the people all the time.
I'm looking very carefully at these scenes. Of course it's tempting to say -- Oh, the reader loved it, it must be good. But then again, he didn't pick up on quite a few of the other things that she did. And as she didn't see the ms before I made the changes he suggested, I'll never know if she would have given the original a nod of approval (though I really doubt it; she's very good at this).
At the end of the day it is MY book. I can do what ever I want. But if I take that attitude, why did I waste these kind people's precious time asking for their input? What I want is to see ASF on the shelves of the book stores. If I'm in a quandary now about making changes, imagine how much more difficult it will be if an agent or editor asks for changes to those same scenes. But on the other hand, if I'm in the fortunate position of having an agent or editor request changes I suspect I'll be more than happy to oblige.
Why is this SO difficult????
My reader is not a writer. I value and respect his judgement, and his comments have helped me make ASF a better and stronger book.
BUT... there are some scenes where their advice is diametrically opposed. Examples:
Scene A
She says it pulled her out of the book, the action wasn't believable
He says it was and it was very exciting.
Scene B
She says I can cut a lot of the stuff because it slows the action. The level of detail is too much.
He says he could really see what was happening and loved it.
Scene C
She doesn't like one piece of description.
He says it was great.
Which just goes to show that you can't please all the people all the time.
I'm looking very carefully at these scenes. Of course it's tempting to say -- Oh, the reader loved it, it must be good. But then again, he didn't pick up on quite a few of the other things that she did. And as she didn't see the ms before I made the changes he suggested, I'll never know if she would have given the original a nod of approval (though I really doubt it; she's very good at this).
At the end of the day it is MY book. I can do what ever I want. But if I take that attitude, why did I waste these kind people's precious time asking for their input? What I want is to see ASF on the shelves of the book stores. If I'm in a quandary now about making changes, imagine how much more difficult it will be if an agent or editor asks for changes to those same scenes. But on the other hand, if I'm in the fortunate position of having an agent or editor request changes I suspect I'll be more than happy to oblige.
Why is this SO difficult????
Monday, March 10, 2008
Cool ideas
Cutting up scenes and moving them around is sooo much better when I do it on paper. I really get a better feel for where I can make changes. As a result I've come up with a total new scene for the end of Chapter 9, which will allow me to move the backstory into Chapter 10, and hopefully the whole thing will hang together better than it did before, because the timeline will be better defined. That new scene will take a small lump of exposition from where it was and expand on it so that it's no longer just exposition. Does that makes sense? Anyway, I know what I mean.
I probably won't be able to do much on it tonight but I have the changes clear in my mind and I'm jazzed about writing them. I think this will add getting on for 1000 new words which is fine. It gives me some wiggle room for a slash-and-burn campaign that has to happen.
I probably won't be able to do much on it tonight but I have the changes clear in my mind and I'm jazzed about writing them. I think this will add getting on for 1000 new words which is fine. It gives me some wiggle room for a slash-and-burn campaign that has to happen.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Procrastination is dead ... Long Live Procrastination
What fun. DST has messed up the application I use to manage the servers at my most important client. Fortunately this is not vital and I can fix it during the week. That does beg the question why didn't I have the darned thing patched up already though. I guess I just missed it in the shuffle. Oh well. Never mind. But messing with it today has eaten into the time I had allocated to make the edits needed in Chapter 9. These are edits that I should have done sooner -- BEFORE my crit partner saw the glob of omniscient backstory. Prevarication, it seems, is one of my stronger points. Ouch!
Now that I've taken a hard look at what needs to be done I'm going to have to do a swift shuffle of scenes in Chapters 9 and 10 to make it work the right way. To that end I've printed out both chapters and I'm going to spend time tomorrow literally cutting paragraphs out and slotting them in where they should be. That's always supposing I can find the time to do it.
But on the upside, my reader called today. He likes the changes that I made to the last chapter, so that's good.
Now that I've taken a hard look at what needs to be done I'm going to have to do a swift shuffle of scenes in Chapters 9 and 10 to make it work the right way. To that end I've printed out both chapters and I'm going to spend time tomorrow literally cutting paragraphs out and slotting them in where they should be. That's always supposing I can find the time to do it.
But on the upside, my reader called today. He likes the changes that I made to the last chapter, so that's good.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Where has the time gone?
Oh man! It can't be a week since I posted, it simply CAN'T! Things are totally out of control for me. At work I've been completing eight knowledge assessments. Yes. Eight. Totally nuts, but that's what I've have to do. And now that those are done I have half a week's worth of catchup to do.
On the ASF front I've been chewing my way through the revisions. By no means done with those yet, and Friday is looming large. I still have ALL my crit for my crit partner to do. I will get that done but it'll be tight this week. Maybe next week will be calmer. Do I hear hollow laughter in the background? Yes, I thought so. Never mind. I'm going to try to put some interesting things in here soon. Otherwise why would anyone want to read it? Thing is, when I'm staring at myself in the mirror, brushing my teeth, I can think of all kinds of fun stuff to say. When I actually get around to putting it "on paper" (so to speak), it's all gone. Ah me.
On the ASF front I've been chewing my way through the revisions. By no means done with those yet, and Friday is looming large. I still have ALL my crit for my crit partner to do. I will get that done but it'll be tight this week. Maybe next week will be calmer. Do I hear hollow laughter in the background? Yes, I thought so. Never mind. I'm going to try to put some interesting things in here soon. Otherwise why would anyone want to read it? Thing is, when I'm staring at myself in the mirror, brushing my teeth, I can think of all kinds of fun stuff to say. When I actually get around to putting it "on paper" (so to speak), it's all gone. Ah me.
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