I’ve finished my first read-through of my manuscript, and I’ve got good and bad news. The good news first: I enjoyed reading it from start to end.…… Read more “Let the editing begin!”
Category: Writing
A confession: I am not logical, and I’m just a bit intimidated by philosophy
I’d like to hear from other writers: How have you approached writing about characters or topics that were out of your league? How did you do research enabling you to write about them with authority? How did you write around things that remained above your pay grade? I want to know how we write about things we don’t understand logically, but get on different level.
To what lengths?
I’m curious about something. How far have you gone for your writing? Have you given up jobs, moved to certain areas, taken classes? To what lengths did you go for your story?
This isn’t modest, but…
I printed up my manuscript today and started reading it.
Is it horribly immodest to day I’m happy with it?
Help I need to edit my first draft
Since I have no idea how to do this, I’ve gathered some ideas from around the internet. Here’s some of what I’ve found. Note that none of these are endorsements because I haven’t actually gotten that far yet. I’m still figuring it all out myself. But here are some things to consider:
Five reasons to like vampires
People are always* asking me, “Why do you like vampires so much.” I admit, I’m sometimes embarrassed by the question. I know it’s often thought to be the realm of angsty teenage girls. And if you’re demanding my honesty, that’s when I first became enamored of them myself.
Perfectionism, or do the thing that scares you
Most of what I know about writing, I learned from my dad. But he was a merciless reviewer of the arts. His brutal assessments instilled an abiding perfectionism in me that has in turns served me well, held me back and given me a monstrous case of anxiety.
A confession
No one had to tell me how important the first page is. I got it already. I got it each time I picked up a book in a store, opened it up to the first page, read a paragraph and set it back on the shelf.
Where did it come from?
When I talk to nonwriters about my project – heck, even when I talk to writers about it – I’m asked any number of things, but “Where did you get that idea from” has got to be one of the things I hear the most.
Platform, they said.
Something big happened a month ago.
At least, it was to me. I reached the end of a sentence. The sentence was the end of a chapter, and the chapter was the end of a first draft, and that was the first book I ever wrote. Getting there was no small feat. This was the culmination of five efforts of writing the dang thing. By this point, I had lived with the idea of the story in my head for nearly twelve years. It was kinda a big deal.
And also, kind of not.
Amsterdamned 