Wishing everyone a Happy New Year from Brisbane, Australia!
May all your reading and writing goals come to fruition.
Happy New Year 2018 #HNY2018
Editing Blues #writing #amwriting #amediting #writerslife #writerwoes
Editing!
Love it or loathe it, it’s a necessary part of the writing process. But it does present some challenges.
Life is sweet…
“Oh, look at that sentence.
So beautiful and so perfect!
Who says you can’t write a sentence right the first time, go me!”
Punctuation woes…
“Why did I put that comma there?”
…deletes comma
“Nope, it was right before.”
…replaces comma
“Nope, it’s a semicolon!”
…replaces with a semicolon
“It works better as two sentences. Ha!”
…splits into two sentences
<sighs>
…removes all punctuation and joins using an ‘and’
The duplicate…
“Why do I have three sentences in a row starting with ‘He’!”
Thesaurus woes…
“I don’t like that word…it feels clunky…I need a better word.”
…opens thesaurus
…replaces word
“Nope.”
…opens thesaurus
…replaces word
“Nope!”
…opens thesaurus
…replaces word
“Nope!!!”
…puts original words back
<sighs>
When nothing works…
“OMG! This sentence is so bad! What the bloody hell was a trying to say!”
…changes order
“Crap!”
…changes to internal thoughts
“No!”
…gives to another character as speach
“Awful!”
…rewrites completely
“OMG!!! I hate this sentence!”
…chop
<contented sigh>
Ready for a Holiday #writerslife #writing #amwriting
Sick club…
I’ve not been well for a few months now with a cold and then a cough that just won’t go away. But this is my last week of work and then I am taking a three week holiday. Really looking forward to a nice relaxing break….Okay, and maybe just a smidgen of fun 😉
Back to the blog…
So, I’m well and truly fed up of the sick club and can’t wait to get back to blogging. I have some fun blog posts queued up and will get cracking on them while I am on holiday! So pull up your chair and get the popcorn out!
Happy holidays…
I’ll be in Brisbane for Christmas and New year, and I will also drop a couple of posts of our travels while there. It’s been over five years since my last visit and I expect it will have changed a fair bit. It’s a long flight from Perth, too, so any scifi or fantasy reading recommendations would be appreciated!
Writerly stuff…
When I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself I was busy writing my new book series. I’m into editing now and happy with the way the book turned out. I usually aim for 100-110k and then cut about 10-20%. This time I didn’t quite make 90k in the draft and it’s tracking at around 80k after the first editing cull. I normally struggle to keep the word count down so this is a new experience for me! I’m comfortable with the storyline and will see how it feels as I read. Sometimes gaps become obvious later, but I would rather it was a good 80k than try and pad it out!
Book 2 for the Divided World Series should be coming out in print soon. And Book 3 just needs a final read, so lots coming in the new year!
Let’s get creative…
I’ve had a lot of fun writing the new book. It was nice to get back into the creative side of writing after so long editing and tweaking the last series. But now the draft is done, I do enjoy the editing 🙂
Happy reading and writing! 🙂
Divided Serenity Book 1 #FREE tomorrow (12th) across all Amazon stores!
Available FREE tomorrow across all Amazon stores! [Click here for your local Amazon store]
John Tanis dreams of killing the man responsible for his exile.
Once loyal to the civilized Aterra, John now fights for Shadowland. But the mysterious arrival of technology outside the wall heralds change.
With the dividing wall crumbling his new loyalties will be tested, and he must choose between revenge and saving the people he once loved.
