15
Sep
Personal Time, Writing Process Reflections // No Comments
This was what I was referencing yesterday: patience. You’re not always going to feel uncreative. States of mind pass. Getting depressed or upset about them doesn’t help, though I understand the impulse to get upset or depressed. It’s hard to take the long view, to wait, especially when your compulsion is to work. Writing yesterday […]
I have the day off from work today. My kids are in daycare. My wife is at work. And one of the things I was looking forward to doing on my day off was focusing on my writing. About a week ago, I finished writing a memoir. The memoir is 300 pages double spaced, nearly […]
The finish line is in sight, but my legs are buckling. My knees are sagging inward. My mind’s gone all foggy. Are there typos? Maybe. Even as an editing professional, it’s difficult to guarantee I haven’t spelled anything wrong in a 250 page document I wrote myself. Especially when I continue to make changes. Is […]
I’m going to try resisting the urge to go into sour grapes mode here. But my confidence is at low ebb, and I’m going to take a moment to talk about what I find to be one of the most, if not the most, frustrating thing about publishing. Notice I say publishing. There comes a time […]
I’ve been trying to do double duty on my book. As I mentioned last week, with the first edit done, I’ve been doing a second one. This involves reading my book aloud into Garage Band and listening to the playback the next day. Because the book is a planned trilogy, I’ve also begun writing the […]
So here we are. I got a good night’s sleep, and the neuroses demons disappeared. They’ll return at some point, maybe even tomorrow. I have no doubt of that. But I listened to playback on my book again and made a few edits, and I’m optimistic again. Then, too, I mentioned that I was waiting […]
It’s no secret that writers are a finicky, superstitious, irritable, irascible bunch. I try not to play up this stereotype, and I do so mainly by keeping quiet about it while it’s going on. But yesterday was a bit more intense than others, and to some extent it was typical in a fashion that even while it’s going […]
I’m winding down the first edit of my novel, and this is exciting for me. The book, which was a little north of 300 pages when I finished drafting, is now 271, which I’d expected. During my first edit, I usually cut between 10 and 15% of the content. The next step is to start over […]
Over time I’ve used different metaphors to describe my editing process. Maybe not aloud, but in my head. And here I’m going to mix them in a way they warn you not to when you’re writing a story. Sometimes I think of my first drafts in terms of filming. I get as much footage as I […]
It’s funny that I sometimes forget just how shamelessly Twitter is about self-promotion. Someone follows me, I’m like, oh, new follower? Let me see who it is! Oh, a DJ. Why would you want to follow me? That’s right, you just want me to follow you back. That’s how this works. Then we can pay no further […]