Hello out there!
Deadlines are interesting things, especially when they’re self imposed. I had set a deadline of June to have Amaranth Dawn ready for publication, but you know what they say about the universe and making plans.
And oh, how the universe laughed at me this time.
But it hasn’t been all bad stuff. We’ve purchased a house, renovated it (it has some serious gutting to be done), and moved. We’ve been here two months and are still unpacking and doing repairs. In fact, I got the last doorknob installed only yesterday.
But what does that have to do with editing? Not much, only that my needy house competes fiercely with my book for my time. Not unlike my kids, come to think of it… And in the end, editing a book is worse because the only guidelines are those you make up.
I actually made really good progress with these penultimate edits on Amaranth Dawn, until I hit the last 80 pages. Then I realize that I needed to add several more scenes and pretty much change everything from there to the end. I have spent the last three weeks trying to get Mariah through three days, but last night we had a breakthrough!
I am still hopeful that we’ll be ready to publish by September. *crosses fingers and waits for universe to laugh*
In the meantime, here’s a snippet from last night that I really enjoyed writing. I do feel kind of bad for everything that I put her through. My son told me not to do ‘the evil laugh’ because we’re not bad people, but I replied that I’m an author…
“Reality dashed that dream like a boulder dropped in a still pond. Hopelessness and despair washed over her and found release in her eyes as she turned to her side and wept.”
Suzanne Paschke said:
Feeling it with you on how the universe loves to laugh at the plans we make. Glad to hear you had a breakthrough with what you were working on. What do you think is the best process for pushing through edits on those days when they just seem a hard slog?
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morganjmuir2 said:
What I have found works best for me when I’m having trouble editing is to set a time to at least try to write. If I can manage to push through just one sentence, or one paragraph, or one page in a day then I am happy. If I sit down and after a few minutes I find I just can’t think of a single thing to do to fix it, I will sometimes ask for suggestions from my writer’s group, but sometimes I will just work on another writing project, or even another creative medium entirely.
Another tool I’ll use when I’m really stuck is to not try to work on it directly. During the day when I had nothing better to think about (like when I’m cleaning), or when I had nothing in particular to talk to my husband about, I’d lay out the situation my character was in and try to talk through what her options were, and usually that was enough to allow me to plug in a few more sentences.
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