Last post I alluded to the fact a real-live editor was going to read a manuscript. Well, I got a very nice email stating the reasons why it wasn’t going to be acquired, reasons I suppose I knew about. I’m used to getting the letters that announce I have not won some such contest. A [...]
Archive for the ‘Works in Progress’ Category
First Rejection
Posted in Works in Progress on April 9, 2011 | 1 Comment »
New Thoughts on Historicism
Posted in Thinking out Loud, Works in Progress, tagged Roger Sutton on July 7, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Though I have much work to do to prepare a manuscript for submission, The Killers plot bunny won’t leave me alone. After rolling my main character’s possible name on my tongue for a few hours, pretending her friends were being either tender or tough with her, I think I’ve settled on it. The name is [...]
Pote-Purry
Posted in Revising, Thinking out Loud, Works in Progress, Writing on July 3, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Last night I stopped looking at cute cat pictures and actually wrote. Me and words: reunited, and it feels so good! Accomplished: – Revision of my MbM picture book. I shoe-horned in a subplot, and like Cinderella’s glass slipper, it was a perfect fit once everything settled. – Envisioned two brief scenes and came up [...]
Rory’s Story Cubes
Posted in Prompting, Works in Progress on June 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I am a mad plotter. Consequently, I am not a fan of journaling from a character’s point of view, as it takes me away from completing a draft and focusing on something that will not end up in the final cut. But my self-prescribed writing therapy has me taking the whole writing thing veeery veeery [...]
Can You Hear Me Now – Authenticity of Voice
Posted in Revising, Works in Progress on June 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Many projects sit in their tidy folders waiting for me to pay them attention. All are very different: a picturebook text, a young YA novel, and a full-fledged YA. Yet all are the same in that their respective character/narrative voices echo off the pages. While jotting down what I hear in my imagination is fun [...]
On the Wings of Angels
Posted in Publishing, Works in Progress on June 1, 2010 | 2 Comments »
I have not used this space to write about my own projects yet. My book-of-the-next-two-days has been prompting me to think back to a WIP collecting cyberdust in my Documents folder. Currently I am reading Halo by Alexandra Adornetto [see the review on the Well Read link sometime this weekend]. It’s about an angel in [...]
Killing Your Darlings
Posted in Revising, Works in Progress, tagged Cynthia Leitich Smith, Halo, NESCBWI, Publishers Weekly on May 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Apparently we writers need to be homicidal maniacs. A piece of advice I’ve heard often times is to “kill your darlings” when revising. No, we’re not to ask our publishers to lace the pages with cyanide. We must simply ax with a machete the carefully crafted words we’ve given birth to. If we don’t, our [...]
Chapter One
Posted in Cheering, Editing, Prompting, Publishing, Revising, Thinking out Loud, Works in Progress, Writing, tagged improper citation, random thoughts on April 9, 2010 | 2 Comments »
It was a dark and stormy night. So I stayed in and started a blog. Though I may travel into another dimension in my dreams. But you, grab a sandwich, book, and kitten and get in bed. That is perfection. This blog will not be. But it will be full of wit and whimsy and [...]
