When the National Book Awards nominees were notified last week, there was a major mistake. This video explains the error–and the spin that has accompanied it.

If you can’t see this video, click here.
To see the entire list of correct nominees, click here.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Guest post by Carol Fisher Saller

Writing Eddie’s War, which consists of 76 prose-poem vignettes, wasn’t easy. I’ve chronicled elsewhere the trouble I got myself into by writing the scenes every which-way in random order without first outlining a plot or getting to know my characters. I’d think of a scene and write it—mostly little slices of life. Here’s a short one:

May 1939
Sarah Mulberry
In the first grade
she was Sam,
not even all that much
a girl.
Smile as wide as her feet were long,
feet made for puddle-jumping,
fence-hopping,
running from boys.
She could bat a ball and fling a cob
with the rest of us.
In junior high, though,
she became Sarah,
still flashing that smile,
but avoiding the cob fights.
Unless she was
provoked.

Sometimes I’d think of a new character and write a scene for him or her. Sometimes I’d build a scene around something that happened in the 1930s or 1940s, like the crash of the Hindenburg, or the invasion of Poland, or the movie Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

This is a terrible way to write a book. But I did have a few characters who kept coming back to me, and two or three story lines that began to emerge. The character of Eddie started speaking in the first person. And I at least had some historical facts in the background that forced a measure of chronology.

And that’s when my group came up with the sentences. (Actually, as I remember it, I was the one who thought it up, and since I’m the one blogging here today, I’m sticking to that.)

The idea is to write a single sentence for each scene or chapter in your book. Include the main plot point and the name of every character who appears in a memorable way:

January 1934, Eddie learns to read newspapers at the library.
May 1937, Eddie and Thomas find some baby foxes and Dad tells them to kill them.
July 1938, Eddie and Gabe argue a moral point.
July 1938, Gabe becomes a hero when Curtis Ray falls out of the tree fort.
September 1938, Dad tells a story about an early experience with a shotgun.
September 1938, Eddie remembers Grampa Rob in the duck blind.
(and so forth)

My list took a couple of pages. Then, in order to see the organization more clearly, I used a different color to highlight each character’s name. (I didn’t color Eddie, since he’s in every scene.)

Plot with summary sentences.

• I put a * in front of any scene that included historical or farm-season facts, so I would be mindful of that when rearranging scenes.
• I put an H in front of scenes that had some humor so I could inject some into the dry spells.

My sentences were becoming an outline! Once I had an improved plot summary in front of me, I decided to make use of the character names in another way. From the sentences, it was easy to make a list of all the scenes a character was in. I called these threads:

• Sarah
• Junior High
• In the Ditch
• Typing Contest
• The Date
• The Hat

In the case of Sarah, by studying her thread along with the SENTENCES, and I could see that she was important but underwritten and that her scenes were clumped awkwardly. I saw that there was nothing about her early on, when she was small, and that I needed some scenes of tension between her and Eddie—I couldn’t let love run smooth!

I added plans of scenes to my list of sentences, like “November 1938: Toddler Sarah dazzles toddler Eddie,” and “May 1944: Sarah and Eddie, tense but funny; he tells her about Jozef.” I used square brackets [like this] to indicate scenes that weren’t written yet.

I have to say, it felt great to come to the laptop every morning and have an assignment waiting between those little brackets instead of just a churning feeling that I would never be able to finish the book. Quite honestly, I’ve never been drawn to writing exercises, but approaching my writing problem as one of organization, I surprised myself by finding that organization can lead to inspiration.

I’ll stop here, but if anyone has questions about this technique, I’d be happy to try to answer them. And if anyone would like to know more about Eddie’s War, I hope they’ll visit my website.

http://www.carolsaller.com
Carol Fisher Saller is a senior manuscript editor and assistant managing editor at the University of Chicago Press and editor of the Chicago Manual of Style Online’s Q&A. She has also worked as an editor of children’s books at Cricket Books (Carus Publishing) and has published several books for children. In addition to Eddie’s War, she is the author of The Subversive Copyeditor: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself) (University of Chicago Press, 2009) and currently writes for the Lingua Franca blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Debut Novel: Spreadsheets Used for Plotting and Revising a Novel

Introduced first in 2007, debut children’s authors have formed a cooperative effort to market their books. I featured Revision Stories from the Classes of 2k8 and 2k9 and this feature returns this year with the Class of 2k11.

• Class of 2008
• Class of 2009
• MORE 2k11

Revision

Guest post by Kiki Hamilton

Revision is hard work. There’s no two ways about it. But it is necessary to improve the story – sometimes it’s the way the writer finds the real story. Though there can be times when it feels like the process of revision never ends – it doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

I like to think of it as making a cake. You have to work in layers.

The first layer is the plot structure. There are lots of different ways to draw out the plot or story arc of your novel. I use a color-coded Excel spreadsheet, others use sticky notes – either way is fine – as long as you have some way to see the overall scope of the story.

Divide your story into acts:
• Act 1 is the set-up: identify your characters and the conflict.
• Act 2 begins with a Turning Point which results in rising action.
• Act 3 the conflict increases until it reaches a Point of No Return. This is where we know what the character wants.
• Act 4 begins from the Point of No Return and we rise to the Crisis, which is where we learn what the character needs. From there we move to the Resolution and The End.

The second layer includes: characters, theme, emotions, plot. Once you’ve got your structure in place, take a look at the elements that create your story: Characters, Theme, Emotions, Plot.

Are your characters three dimensional? Is your protagonist well-developed? Do we care about them? Is there a theme present in the story? Here’s a big one for me – is the plot believable? Do the protagonist’s choices make sense?

The third layer contains the supporting elements. This is the time to look at side characters, dialogue, scene transitions, and pacing. Are the side characters necessary? Do they get enough time on stage? Do your characters speak in a believable way? Cliffhangers are great but make sure that when you move from one scene to the next, or one chapter ending to a new chapter, that you do it in a way that your reader can follow the timeline and sequence of events. Also, it’s hard to look at your own work objectively, but try to see where the pace of your story drags and where it might move too quickly.

The final layer is the details. This is my favorite part of the revision process. I like to think of it as putting on the beautiful sparkly frosting.

Make sure you’re showing and not telling. Show us what the main character is thinking and feeling through description and actions. Provide fresh, original details. Use vivid verbs and phrasing so that when the character’s heart races, ours does too. And finally, drop in those last little details that will set your work apart from others.

Revision is hard work but it is this part of crafting a story that will make the reader remember your characters long after they read ‘The End’.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Debut Novel: Spreadsheets Used for Plotting and Revising a Novel

Introduced first in 2007, debut children’s authors have formed a cooperative effort to market their books. I featured Revision Stories from the Classes of 2k8 and 2k9 and this feature returns this year with the Class of 2k11.

• Class of 2008
• Class of 2009
• MORE 2k11

Trinity Faegen, THE MEPHISTO COVENANT, YA, Fall 2011

Revisions: Literary Fast Forward

Guest post by Trinity Faegen

Ironically, I’m writing this just after receiving the editorial letter and line edits on my first YA novel. The editor has an issue with my timeline and asked me to extend it.

How long is your story from beginning to end? A day? A week? A year? Mine is about a week, and he feels this is too short, that I need to extend it to ten days or even two weeks, but how can I lengthen the timeline without adding extraneous scenes that read like filler?

The answer is the literary equivalent of fast forward.

First, I’ll find one or more areas within the manuscript that are already transitional, such as the end of a scene that draws a subplot to conclusion, or one that ends a dramatic confrontation. I’m fortunate because one of my plot elements involves a character’s need for information, which can’t be had quickly. I will find a scene ending that lends itself to a lapse of dramatic action until things begin to happen again. I’ll add a few paragraphs to the beginning of the next scene, in the appropriate point of view, to let the reader know time has passed, but nothing happened off-screen. The characters ate, slept, went to school, lived their lives, until now, when we are picking up the pace again.

The paragraphs might read something like this:

“After her miserable first day at Telluride High, Sasha didn’t think it could get worse. She was wrong. As the lie Brett told about her spread, it morphed into something even he, in his twisted, pervy little mind, couldn’t have dreamed up. Not only did everyone believe she had sex on the Internet, they now thought she did it for money. She was like a leper, always alone, everyone avoiding her as if she was contagious.
By Friday, her fifth day in Hell, she’d had enough. Somehow, she had to turn the tables on Brett, and since she had not one single friend to help, she’d have to do it alone.
First period began like always, Mrs. Redmon calling on another victim to read from The Metamorphosis. Sasha could feel Brett’s eyes staring at her, knew he was smirking, smug and pleased with himself. She waited until….”

You get the idea. I’ve skipped ahead four days, in two paragraphs, segueing into this comeuppance scene where new drama will unfold. Sasha’s home life is also horrible, but I established this earlier in the story, so no need to cover it again. Even though I don’t mention it, the reader can intuit that her nights were as dreary as her days during the time we just skipped over.

When revising, literary fast forward isn’t difficult, but it’s important not to fall into the trap of telling, not showing. A little bit of exposition goes a long way. Just make sure all you’ve skipped showing is the passage of time.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Debut Novel: Spreadsheets Used for Plotting and Revising a Novel

Introduced first in 2007, debut children’s authors have formed a cooperative effort to market their books. I featured Revision Stories from the Classes of 2k8 and 2k9 and this feature returns this year with the Class of 2k11.

• Class of 2008
• Class of 2009
• MORE 2k11

An 8-Revision Success Story: Thanks, Spreadsheets!

Guest post by Carrie Harris

I’m a huge reviser.

I feel like there should be a support group for that, don’t you? Because we’ve all heard about the authors who change four words in their first draft, slap a cover on it, and BAM! Instant bestseller. I think those people are mutants. Or aliens. Or mutant aliens.

Not me, though. My book, BAD TASTE IN BOYS, went through about seven large scale revisions before my agent sent it out. And then my editor had me rewrite about 2/3 of it. From SCRATCH.

Scary? Maybe a little. But it wasn’t all that bad because I found a revision process that made me comfortable. Everyone’s got an opinion on how to revise, right? You NEED note cards. You NEED a corkboard. You NEED an outline. You NEED to print your manuscript and read it aloud in Pig Latin.
And sure, try all those things, except maybe the Pig Latin. But don’t do what I did—don’t stick with a system that doesn’t work for you. For years, I used a corkboard to plot my books, because everyone knows that writers use corkboards, right? There was just one problem—I hated that corkboard with the fire of a thousand suns.

It didn’t work for me, either. So when those massive revisions came from my editor, I pulled it off the wall, stomped on it therapeutically for a while, and opened up an Excel spreadsheet. That’s right; I use Excel for revisions. I don’t know anyone else who does it that way. But it works for me.
(NOTE from Darcy: For more on spreadsheet plotting see this post on spreadsheet plotting and this one comparing the advantages of spreadsheet plotting and the shrunken manuscript.)

Now I create spreadsheets for all my books. I list the major elements in each scene: plot points, characters, setting, time of day. I also keep track of my personal tics. For example, my first drafts always have too much driving or walking from one place to another, so I have a column for that. And when I’m done, I’ve got a clear view of the whole manuscript…and the glaring problems. It doesn’t work to stick your MC in the same room for 75 pages at a pop, but somehow I can’t see that when I’m reading. Once that spreadsheet is done? I usually smack myself in the forehead, because DUH! Why didn’t I notice it before?
Once I understand the problems, fixing them is relatively easy. Sure, revision is still a massive undertaking, but my spreadsheets give me a framework instead of just this big disjointed stack of scenes that I’ve got to somehow solidify into a book.

Find Your Revision Strategy

Does this mean you MUST use Excel to revise your next manny? Try it if it sounds appealing, but that’s not my point! My point is that if you are a revision-hater, the problem isn’t YOU. The problem is that you haven’t found YOUR process yet. There are a million ways to revise. Don’t stop until you’ve found yours, even if it’s something wonky and off-the-wall. If it works, who cares?

And if your process involves Pig Latin, I want to talk to you. I’ve got to know how you do it.

If you can’t see the book trailer, you can see it on YouTube here.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Replace Abstractions with Concrete Detail!

Guest post by Geoff Herbach

Introduced first in 2007, debut children’s authors have formed a cooperative effort to market their books. I featured Revision Stories from the Classes of 2k8 and 2k9 and this feature returns this year with the Class of 2k11.

• Class of 2008
• Class of 2009
• MORE 2k11

What’s wrong with this passage?

Bobby was such a nice boy. He would help people who needed to be helped. But something wasn’t right. Bobby felt sad everyday of his life.

It’s dead. You can’t see, feel, or smell it. It’s all tell, no show. What makes the passage that way? Abstractions!

In writing, abstractions are words that symbolize a notion. For instance, in the passage above, what does nice mean? What does helped mean? What does sad mean? Abstract is good in math (math describes reality using symbols, which are by nature abstract). Abstraction can be really cool in visual art. Check out Mondrian’s work Broadway Boogie Woogie, a series of lines and blocks of color meant to represent Midtown Manhattan. You get a different idea of Manhattan through abstraction. Abstraction does not work in writing, though!

Mondrain: Broadway Boogie Woogie, Low-res used under Fair Use

You might have had an English teacher or writing instructor ask you to “show” not “tell”. Often they’re asking you to replace your abstractions with concrete detail.

Reading should be a visceral experience. You should feel it in your guts. If I say I am nice, do you know what nice really means? No way! You can’t see it, feel it, or smell it. If I say every morning I get up at the cold crack of dawn, roll out of my warm covers so I can trek three miles to my disabled grandma’s house to help her make breakfast, do you know what nice means? Oh yeah. You can see and feel it.

Circle Abstractions. When I am revising my work, one of my steps is to go through the manuscript and circle every one of my abstractions. After I do that, I’ll think about each instance and decide if the abstraction serves the story or takes away from the reader’s ability to “see” what I mean. Almost always I’ll replace the abstraction (showing what nice means) with concrete details like getting up at the cold crack of dawn or making breakfast for my grandma.

If I replace every abstraction in that initial passage, I get this:

Every morning Bobby woke up at 5 am so he could cross the wide street in front of his house and serve Old Lady Grisham a breakfast of poached eggs and apple smoked bacon before he left for classes at Golden Prairie High. Still, even though his parents hugged and smiled at each other every time they looked at Bobby – they were so proud, each morning that spring, in first hour English, Bobby’s stomach twisted and his face reddened and he excused himself and went to the bathroom to talk himself out of crying.

Now the passage is alive. Abstractions are replaced with concrete detail that shows who your character is, where your character exists, and how your character is nice, helpful, and also sad. What an easy trick!

So, as one of your revision steps, make sure you locate where you use abstractions, and consider replacing them with concrete details!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

My Novel Revision Retreats rely heavily upon the Shrunken Manuscript technique. Basically, you use the magic of word processors to shrink the font of the mss until you can see the big picture of the story.

Uma Krishnaswami used a variation of the technique in revising her new novel. Here’s a look at Uma’s writing process for The Grand Plan to Fix Everything (Atheneum).

Uma Krishnaswami’s Shrunken Manuscript

The Grand Plan Book Trailer

Uma Talks about The Grand Plan Book

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Amy Dominy, OyMG, YA, May 2011

Introduced first in 2007, debut children’s authors have formed a cooperative effort to market their books. I featured Revision Stories from the Classes of 2k8 and 2k9 and this feature returns this year with the Class of 2k11.

• Class of 2008
• Class of 2009
• MORE 2k11

HOW TO HANDLE REVISION NOTES WITHOUT LOSING YOUR MIND

Guest post by Amy Dominy

We’ve all been there, right? You hand off your perfect manuscript to let someone read it, and when you get it back—WHAT?—there are notes on it?

Revisions notes can come from a variety of people and take a variety of forms. Maybe your writer’s group has jotted down notes in the margin of your pages. Maybe you’ve been to a conference and received a typewritten critique from an editor or another author. Or maybe you sent a proposal to an agent who agreed to look at more if you’ll make just a few changes. For me, my latest revision notes came from my editor in the form of a letter…4 pages long. (Single-spaced!)

However revisions turn up, they can break your heart and lead you to a tub of chocolate therapy. For the sake of my sanity (and my waistline), I’ve had to come up with a way to tackle revision notes. This is what I wanted to share with you today.

7 Steps to Revision

1. READ THE REVISION LETTER/NOTES.
   A. It will say something like this: Blah, blah, blah YOU’RE HOPELESS Blah, blah, blah IT’S ALL WRONG Blah, blah, blah GIVE UP NOW Blah, blah, blah IS IT TOO LATE TO GET A REAL ESTATE LICENSE?
   (Of course it won’t say any of this, but that’s what you’ll absorb.)
2. PUT THE REVISION NOTES AWAY For at least a day or two. No arguing!
3. TAKE OUT THE REVISION NOTES & READ THEM AGAIN.
   This time, you should be able to see past the emotional reaction and actually evaluate the comments. (NOTE: If you still see only hopelessness, go back to #1 and Repeat.)
4. MARK UP THE NOTES
   • I highlight the comments I agree with and need to act on.
   • I underline suggestions that I DON’T agree with. (I want to go back into the story, and figure out if I have an underlying problem that can be fixed in a different way.)
   • I circle any changes I know for certain that I WON’T make. Remember, this is your book and ultimately it has to feel right to you. That said, if the revisions are for an agent or an editor, you’ll want to explain your rationale for leaving the story as it was.

   When you’re done, you should be able to clearly see what you need to address, what you need to evaluate, and what you need to ignore.

5. BREAK DOWN THE REVISIONS: START SMALL
   How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
   It’s an old joke, but it applies to revisions as well as elephants. Revision notes can be overwhelming. Sometimes, my first reaction is to freeze up. It’s too much. I can’t do it all.
   That’s okay. You don’t have to do it all.
   You just have to do one little thing.
   And start that way—with something small. Something easily handled. When I look over the comments I’ve highlighted, there are always a couple of things I can fix in a sentence or a paragraph.
   Then, by the time I move on to the harder stuff, I’ve already made progress.
6. CHECK OFF EACH REVISION AS YOU MAKE IT.
   This is a great thing to do for a few reasons:
   • You can keep track of your progress
   • Give yourself credit for the revisions you’ve made.
   • Avoid missing something (which I’ve done before and is very embarrassing.)
7. CELEBRATE.
   You’ve got a revised book…and your sanity!!
   So there it is. It’s worked for me. I hope it’ll work for you.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Introduced first in 2007, debut children’s authors have formed a cooperative effort to market their books. I featured Revision Stories from the Classes of 2k8 and 2k9 and this feature returns this year with the Class of 2k11.

• Class of 2008
• Class of 2009
• MORE 2k11

On Revisions and The Pull of Gravity

Guest post by Gae Polisner

I have revised The Pull of Gravity (Frances Foster Books/Farrar Straus Giroux, May 2011) at least four times, including two major overhauls and two significant clean-up revisions. As for the two major overhauls, during those, I rewrote, added, removed, and, um, then restored, scenes and changed the entire chronology (as further described below), and yet, ultimately, it remains the original book I shopped to my publisher on Day One. Only – I’m pretty sure – better.

Revision Struggle Invisible to Readers

I think maybe that is the key to revision – that the hours of sweaty frustration, doubt, exhausted temper tantrums and sometimes tears cannot be tangibly seen – or picked out – in the final version, only viscerally felt as you read a more cohesive, engaging story.
At any rate, here’s the shaggy-dog tale of revisions in my case.
Through serendipity, my editor (the eponymous Frances Foster) got her hands on a very early version of my manuscript (then called, Steinbeck, The Scoot, and the Pull of Gravity). She loved and adored it (while I’m sure feeling it needed some good hard work), and so passed it around “the house” in anticipation of resounding agreement. Which it did not get. Instead, one well-regarded editor in particular had some harsh criticism and strong reservations, and, as a result, my editor reluctantly passed on it.

Battered but not deterred, I set to work revising so we could send it out wide to other publishers, bearing in mind the harsh, yes, but at times insightful, criticism of the Editor-Who-Did-Not-Love. At that time, at my then-agent’s recommendation (and despite my own concerns), I also monkeyed with the chronology of the story.
As my agent and I were about to shop it wide, Frances came back asking if revisions had been made and if she might see it again. From there, it passed muster house-wide.

A book deal was made (hooray!) and then I sat down with Frances.
She loved some of the revisions that had been made, some fleshing out of the story, some fixes of you-know-who’s issues, BUT she missed the original chronology and wanted it restored. Easier said than done, to keep the new but restore the old and seamlessly weave it together.
I’m guessing that one revision back took a hundred hours. But without the full exercise, I wouldn’t have had some of the great new scenes and fleshing out, and, moreover, I wouldn’t have had a book deal.
The thing with revisions is you have to breathe, and you have to be patient and painstaking. And you have to be willing to put in the time. Because, for most of us, the first draft is just that: drafty. It’s the revisions that make the book.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Introduced first in 2007, debut children’s authors have formed a cooperative effort to market their books. I featured Revision Stories from the Classes of 2k8 and 2k9 and this feature returns this year with the Class of 2k11.

• Class of 2008
• Class of 2009
• MORE 2k11

Learning to Respect Revision

Guest post by Alissa Grosso

Revision is Not Fun

When I was in second grade I wrote and illustrated a story about the Easter Bunny for a school assignment. The story wasn’t very good, and for obvious reasons the illustrations could best be described as being childish. The handwriting wasn’t much better. I had to rewrite a final draft. I can actually recall having to ask my teacher what some of the letters I had written were supposed to be, and she rightly pointed out that she didn’t know since she hadn’t written them. All I was doing with that revision was neatening things up, the story was still a mess, but it taught me a valuable lesson. Revision is not fun.

Perhaps because of this early experience, I avoided revising anything. School assignments and the great literary works that I was sure I was creating saw only one draft. I wasn’t ignorant. I knew there was this thing called revision. I knew that the idea was to read back over what one had written and make it better. I decided that wasn’t something I needed to worry about. After all, I was a brilliant writer. Revision was for the less talented.

The problem was, I got away with this because I was a pretty good writer. So, those unrevised school papers I submitted usually earned me A’s. They weren’t perfect, far from it, but they were a lot better than what most of my classmates were submitting, so my teachers and professors looked past my papers’ flaws. When you’re a writer in a sea of non-writers, you can get away with not revising. The real world is not so forgiving.

In college, I completed a science fiction novel for my senior honors project. My novel had a beginning, a middle and an end, at that’s about where its similarity to a complete novel ended. My adviser was a published novelist, but he tended to write relationship fiction and I think he was so overwhelmed by a novel that featured all sorts of futuristic thingamabobs that he didn’t have a clue how to help me revise it. Instead he suggested I try to get it published. Thankfully, for my literary reputation, that never happened.

Practicing with Short Stories

Instead of turning to drugs or hard alcohol, I turned to short stories. When a bunch of my first draft stories were rejected, I stumbled upon an online writing workshop. Finally, at the ripe age of twenty-something, I came to the conclusion that revision, which was still as painful as it had been in second grade, might be necessary. With a lot of help from fellow workshop members, I began revising some of those first draft stories. A funny thing happened. By the third or fourth draft some of those stories were actually published.

Eventually I found my way back to novels. After much procrastinating, I actually finished a novel. No, that’s not entirely correct. I finished the first draft of a novel. As any writer knows, it’s a wonderful feeling to get to the end of a novel, to write the last word of the last chapter. There’s a brief period of time when we can bask in the glory of having completed our masterpiece. Then we must dive back in and turn that mess of a manuscript into something halfway decent. Thanks to my workshop experience, I already knew a thing or two about revising. It wasn’t fun, but I did what I could to make my novel into something that somebody besides me could actually make sense of, and maybe, possibly enjoy.

I submitted it to a publisher, and then I got the magical call. My editor was full of praise for my novel. It’s possible he was trying to soften the blow about what he thought about the end of my novel, specifically that it didn’t really have an ending. The good news was that I was going to be a published author, the bad news was that I would have to slog through some pretty major revisions to get there.

I would like to say that this whole revision business got easier the more I did it, but I’ve yet to find the joy in revision. That’s okay because I’m really digging this whole published author thing, and from what I can tell there’s no way to accomplish that without revision.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win