Errands of the day first: Farmer’s market for fresh veggies, and then the grocery store to pick up the rest. Dump my green beans in water, then leave them to dry while I’m off to take care of my first writing task.
Hit the Writers of the Future story for a review first. This is a quick editing round and a sanity check. I add a little more description to accompany the dialogue because I’ve learned more since I wrote the story (Story #47 from the challenge). Ending looks okay and I expected to have to fix that.
Then I run a search and replace for the word “was.” I’m impressed that there are only five in the entire story. After that, a search and replace for two spaces. I run the search twice to catch all of them. Some final cleanup for manuscript format, though I’ll review the guidelines before I submit.
Work on chapter 8, then a break to trim my green beans. Videos show how “easy” it is to do them all at once. That’s for the grocery store version, all perfectly straight. The farmer’s market ones are curly, so it’s a lot of one at a time. I think of a few things to add for my setting, scurry back and type in all caps what I need to add.
Lunch, and then I cut my hair, since it’s the fall equinox. Put nut and fruit porridge into the slow cooker, set a timer for 30, and off to finish Chapter 8 (which I’m thinking is cursed).
I feel sometimes like I have to rewire my brain to think about the setting. It’s not as bad as when I first discovered I wasn’t putting nearly enough in (read: I wasn’t putting any in at the time), but still a struggle. This was one of the things that I got angry about with the writing community. It’s “common wisdom” that description is boring, that you should add description only in drips and drabs. Even the writing books being published today feel like they gloss over this. There’s one I ran into that actively says not to do it all.
Admittedly, it’s probably because this is a hard skill to learn, and none of the books are teaching writers how to get published. Only how to write a book.
I think on the next project, I might have to do an opening volley of creating maps for the setting, rather than creating one after I realize there’s a problem. Meanwhile, the map for the scenes I’m working on. This was done in PowerPoint.
Linda Maye Adams 