Suddenly the Muse Appeared
By some miracle, and grace of a higher power, I managed to pull together a few plots (and subplots) and finish the latest draft of THE novel. The one I am hopeful an agent will be looking at by weeks end. As well as an editor.
Did I nail it? I'd like to think so. But, one can never be too sure. What I DO know is that the book is better for these changes and additions. See, being trained as a technical writer has hurt me somewhat as a novelist. I write for a living, which does help me in my fiction writing (one can never get too much practice) BUT, I have been taught to use as few words as possible to cut down on costs and not confuse an "end-reader." Yep-that is business speak in the technical writing circles. However, this little tactic doesn't always help me when I write fiction.
I'll leave out descriptive words. I'll forget that we can smell! And I've even been caught writing pages and pages of dialogue with only a few paragraphs of prose. So, you see--this adding information can be painful, excruciating, and downright hard for someone that has been practicing LESS WORDS IS BETTER theories for the last 10 years.
Regardless, this revision was time well spent and I am proud of the book as a whole. A whole bunch MORE proud than the first draft. So, I guess you could say I did my job as a writer--I revised it into a much better book.
Now it is time to cross my fingers, pray, hop on one foot while the moon and stars align and see if I can get representation and/or a contract in my sticky fingers (yep, some caramel butter toffee corn did wonders in helping me in the final hours).
And then maybe, just maybe, I can give you some decent posts to read on this dear old blog.
Did I nail it? I'd like to think so. But, one can never be too sure. What I DO know is that the book is better for these changes and additions. See, being trained as a technical writer has hurt me somewhat as a novelist. I write for a living, which does help me in my fiction writing (one can never get too much practice) BUT, I have been taught to use as few words as possible to cut down on costs and not confuse an "end-reader." Yep-that is business speak in the technical writing circles. However, this little tactic doesn't always help me when I write fiction.
I'll leave out descriptive words. I'll forget that we can smell! And I've even been caught writing pages and pages of dialogue with only a few paragraphs of prose. So, you see--this adding information can be painful, excruciating, and downright hard for someone that has been practicing LESS WORDS IS BETTER theories for the last 10 years.
Regardless, this revision was time well spent and I am proud of the book as a whole. A whole bunch MORE proud than the first draft. So, I guess you could say I did my job as a writer--I revised it into a much better book.
Now it is time to cross my fingers, pray, hop on one foot while the moon and stars align and see if I can get representation and/or a contract in my sticky fingers (yep, some caramel butter toffee corn did wonders in helping me in the final hours).
And then maybe, just maybe, I can give you some decent posts to read on this dear old blog.
