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Few things are more interesting than revising. Having seen what you said, you begin to discover what you meant. It’s like psychoanalysis–except it’s free. Zibby Oneal, novelist.
Time to Re-Plot my Novel I’ve been chugging along on my novel revision, enjoying how the scenes are coming together. But it’s time to stop and take a wider look at the structure of the novel. Sigh. I’m not pleased. I was enjoying the pace of revisions and starting to enjoy the rhythm I had [...]
“In baseball, you only get three swings and you’re out. In rewriting, you get almost as many swings as you want and you know, sooner or later, you’ll hit the ball.” Neil Simon, playwright
Lauren Bjorkman Debuts with MY INVENTED LIFE Introduced first in 2007, debut children’s authors have formed a cooperative effort to market their books. Last year, I featured many of the Class of 2k8 on Revision Notes, as they told the stories of how 2k8 Novels Were Revised. Today, I’m glad to continue the 2k9 Series [...]
Dear Contributor: Thank you for not sending us anything lately. It suits our present needs. –Note from publisher received by Snoopy in the comic strip “Peanuts” (Charles Schulz)
First Page: So much from so few words At the AR-SCBWI fall retreat this weekend, Alexandra Penfold, Associate Editor of S&S took us through a discussion of first pages of our novel mss. She commented on the pages, then opened the discussion for other comments or questions. Here are some observations on the discussions (Note: [...]
Voice and Scenes: Tomorrow, I’ll be speaking at the Arkansas SCBWI Fall Retreat on the topics of Voice and Writing in Scenes. Alexandra Penfold, editor at Simon & Schuster will be doing open sessions evaluating first pages in depth, as well as talking about social media. Back on Monday! Our fall retreat is always a [...]
Interior Thoughts Reveal Character I spent time yesterday adding more interior thoughts to a character. My critiquers felt they needed to know the character better at this point in the story. I’ve done the requisite “Show, Don’t Tell,” but readers still felt they needed more to really know the character. What does she FEEL here? [...]
Issues I Must Deal With in This Novel Revision How’s your novel revision going, Darcy? Big v. little issues. I work for a while to clarify in my mind the big structural issues, then work on a single chapter of the novel, making it fit that overall structure. But at some point,
Today, is your life busy? Stop that! Your life isn’t busy. Instead, your life is FULL. YOUR CUP RUNNETH OVER! And really, do you want it any other way? Live full today.
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