Last month I participated in NANOWRIMO, a race to write 50K words in the month of November. It gave me the competitive drive to write 44,000 while also macro and line-editing a novella that will release next year. But the result of writing that fast was a sequence of chapters and scenes that might — or might not — actually mesh together. This fast writing was an important part of the process…but it can leave me with a bit of a mess.
That means I printed off a copy of the document, broken apart by scene, so I could see what I actually have. That’s 200 pages of writing, with two and a half pages of notes scrawled on sheets of paper. I then color coded at the top who the point-of-view character is in the scene and other key details. The goal is that a glance will tell me what’s there so I can see what needs to be added. Maybe it just made me feel productive when I was fighting the fatigue of my end of semester crash — that came two weeks too early. However, this process has helped me see what I have and what is missing. Namely for this book the suspense is going to have to be heavily layered in as I rearrange the pages and scenes. Fortunately, my brainstorming group helped me find some key questions that should aid in identifying ways I can get a few bodies and mayhew laced into the words. Wish me luck!
High school swim season has also started, which has found me on deck with a microphone announcing the events. Tuesday night I announced diving for the first time. That is quite the feat. I certainly don’t want it as a full time job, but it’s a good way to be close to the action without having to become a deck official — doing that for USA Swimming meets is quite enough for me, thank you kindly!
The last thing I wanted to share with you this week, is this wonderful card and encouraging verses. A reader sent these to me a few days ago, and it has been such a blessing. I think we often undermine how much of an impact something like this can make for someone. I love to fill other people’s mailboxes with notes — and was so very blessed when this reader took the time to do the same for me. Writing can be so solitary, so it’s been very fun to build relationships with readers like you. Thank you for all the ways you encourage us!
If you haven’t already, be sure to enter the giveaway below. I can’t wait to send these three books (Toni Shiloh, Robin Lee Hatcher, and Joanna Politano’s latest) to three different readers!
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