Tag Archives: revision
Editing vs. Revising vs. Rewriting
I’ve been taking a workshop on Editing Yourself. It’s not the first workshop I’ve had like this; I had another one called Keys to Editing, which covered the topic if you wanted to go in business as an editor. The Editing Yourself is very different from that one. The editing class is on essentially taking …
Not Fixing it on the Revision
One of the “rules” I’ve seen around is not to edit or revise as your write. It leaves writers to race through the draft and deal with a more worse problem: I’ll fix it on the revision. Last week, I hit about 10K on my science fiction novel Sinhollow, and I realized I had a …
Not leaving it for the revision
I’m on a Facebook page where everyone’s focus—especially now with NANO—is to simply get the first draft out of the way so they can get to the revision. It’s like the first draft is so distasteful, it’s like, “Let’s just gulp this down and get it out of the way. Everything can be fixed on …
Writing Mis-Advice Reported as Facts #3
Number three in my mis-advice, and this one’s probably going to be a bit controversial. But all five relate to each in some way. Give yourself permission to write crap. First, I do get the principle behind his particular piece of advice. It’s “Don’t let yourself get bogged down by trying to be perfect.” Some …
Rule S: don’t beat a dead Story
Linda’s Rules of Writing We’re onto the letter S in Linda’s Rules of Writing of the A to Z Challenge, and don’t beat a dead Story. My first novel was a dead story that I kept trying to fix. It was called “Remember No Evil” and was a thriller. I’d get about to the first …
Rule H: treat line editing like Housekeeping not revision
Linda’s Rules of Writing We’re onto the letter H in Linda’s Rules of Writing of the A to Z Challenge, and treating line editing like Housekeeping, not revision. One of the things that Holly Lisle mentioned in her course How to Revise Your Novel was that a lot of writers start revision by line editing, …
When I Almost Gave Up Novel Writing
I just got accepted into Odyssey’s Getting the Big Picture: The Key to Revising Your Novel, which is a huge milestone in the journey for book Miasma. You see, because of Miasma, I thought about giving up novel writing and going back to just short stories. When I broke up with my cowriter, it was …
Houston, We Have A Story
Miasma is done. At long last. I’d finished it in May of 2010 and started submitting it to agents. But there was a nagging feeling that something wasn’t right, and I was admittedly uncomfortable with the fact I’d had to do every workaround imaginable to get the word count to 80K. It wasn’t until an …
A Time Waster: Revise While Creating
This week, it’s been tough getting writing in–did 590 words yesterday and got an idea for a new, short scene. We’ve had thunderstorms all week, so at the first sign, computer gets shut off. We’re also starting to get early humidity, which is turning into tornado warnings. Maryland’s had a few watches, but nothing has …
