The Write Slice: Write or Wrong

Today is one of those days when I really dreaded writing/revising. But I forced myself to do it anyway. So, yay for me. I just didn't necessarily work on what's on my mind. I met with my critique group last night, and one member gave me a great suggestion, but it's just too overwhelming for me to deal with right now. In a section of my excerpt, I try to give some back story along with current action. Well, it ended up more back story than action, which I already knew. The hard part is, the individual told me it lost my character's voice almost completely. He's right. I know that. That doesn't mean I have to like it though. Voice is one of those things you just "have," right? So what happens when you don't "have" it or you lose it? I don't know. That's why I can't deal with it right now. So instead, I ignore him and for a few days, I'll pretend I'm thinking about how to fix it. That's still writing, right? ...

There are a lot of different ideas out there about how much we "should" be working on our writing. I heard advice once from Clint Johnson that the key is consistency. Even if you can only find 15 minutes every day to write, write for those 15 minutes. That philosophy has been very freeing for me. I have found that if I try to focus in on 15 minutes a day, often I end up writing a lot longer than that. Once I get started, somehow I find more time. But I also have to be flexible. I started getting in a habit of waking up early to write - and I am definitely not a morning person. I would wake up about an hour before my son woke up, and that was my writing time. It worked great for a couple of months. Then I got pregnant again and exhaustion set in. I could not wake up early anymore; in fact, I was doing well if I could get up with my son. And on top of it, at about the same time, my son learned to get out of his crib and experimented with no ...

...I Should Have Figured Out a Long Time Ago So as I was working on my novel and getting feedback from my critique group this week, two things hit me that were two "No, duh" things. But I had never thought of them before, so maybe neither have you. Realization #1:  If I don't remember it, then it isn't important.  As noted in a previous blog , I finished my novel recently, so now begins the revision process. My Master's project review committee told me they did not want to see more than 50 pages from the last excerpt I had given them until the end, preferrably 30. I finished and it was 65. So now to slice-'n'-dice. Have I mentioned before how hard it is for me to cut? I have? Are you sure? This week's writing has been spent reading through the last chunk of the novel and trying to trim, condense, or occasionally cut. It's very difficult for me. But as I was reading through it again, there were some scenes I had written a couple of ...