First thoughts
So I’ve got 400+ pages of novel sitting before me on my desk. Some would probably call it wasteful resources to print out an entire first draft like this, especially as for the first time ever I intend to do…
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So I’ve got 400+ pages of novel sitting before me on my desk. Some would probably call it wasteful resources to print out an entire first draft like this, especially as for the first time ever I intend to do…
Continue readingIn revising one of my closing chapters I find that I am missing an important, linking, scene in the action. How the hell did I suppose, when writing, that I could carry my readers with my protagonists from one scene…
Continue readingWhat I want to be doing, now, is making changes from my printed and well-thumbed script into my electronic version of my novel, so that I can send it off to friends and readers. But I am sleepy. I put…
Continue readingSome days are more successful than others. Today was a successful one. Sitting with my sandwiches in one hand, pen in the other, novel before me on the canteen table, I worked as usual through the pages of part five…
Continue reading…one line, of note, that has met the axe as a result of revising my novel. Now that Hannah is Kirsten, there is no need for the authorial nod to the two Hannah/Hanna Katla conundrum. Whilst the story is better…
Continue readingOkay, it’s done. For years now I have been perfectly well aware that I have been breaking the cardinal rule of writing in having two characters of (broadly similar) the same name: Hannah Ball and Hanna Katla Baldursdóttir. There have…
Continue readingThe ‘first pass’ reading revising of Part Four is primarily for establishing where to subdivide it into (approximately) six chapters, and for refreshing my own mind over what actually happens in the chapter. It’s also useful for getting to grips…
Continue readingI’m going to try and get the revisions to part three of Blood & Fire finished by the end of this weekend, and thus reach the half-way point. The thing is, I think I’m going to have to change the…
Continue readingIâve been putting my handwritten changes to chapter 13 into the Word file. Because I was working offline with an old fashioned pen-type of arrangement I havenât seen the comments and corrections that Helen has already made to an earlier…
Continue readingThatâs it. Iâve finished revising chapter 13. It’s weird, but as I’ve been doing the revising, I have been crossing out the bits that I thought, god this is really crap, but-I-need-to-write-it-to-get-the-story-on as I was writing it, and sure enough,…
Continue readingWhen I came to make my lunch this morning I found that I had no bananas. There was a rather scrummy looking bread’n’butter pudding on offer in the canteen today. In some kind of rather flawed and backward logic I…
Continue readingMy lunchtimes (at work) recently have consisted of being evenly split between reading The Timetraveller’s Wife and revising my own nove. The former is written in first person, present tense; and the latter in third person, present tense… I’ve been…
Continue readingIn preparation for second draft revision work of Part Three of Blood & Fire I’ve been reading it through with fresh eyes. It seems to be very much a chapter of two halves. The first bit is akin to Part…
Continue readingChapter 10 is done. The second draft is 30% complete. I am pleased. 🙂
Continue reading1. It’s funny, that moment in the morning, just before you wake. I was dreaming a story, and I was dreaming the actual process of writing it down choosing the words, as it was being ‘acted’ out in front of…
Continue readingThis has been a very productive weekend, this one. I’ve done some CC critting (although doubtless my fellow CC’ers would say that I haven’t done enough :-\ ) and I have revised through the corrections given to me on chapters…
Continue readingA case of burning the candle at both ends last night. Revising chapter 1 and 2 into the night, I went to bed a little after midnight, which was not too late. The thing is my mind was still going…
Continue readingAs you know I switch quite regularly between different POVs and plotlines, and I make use flashbacks in my novel Blood & Fire. I’ve just started looking at Part Two in my process of revising it, and I have a…
Continue readingThe subject line says it all. Draft two of chapter six is complete! Yes… 😉
Continue readingI’ve been getting some good critiques from CritiqueCircle. They are perhaps not coming in as numerously as they do to some people – and I still can’t fathom exactly what it is that leads some stories to get dramatically different…
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