Writer's Tip: Polishing

I don't do it often, but once in a while, I treat myself to a manicure or a pedicure. Just the sight of my elegant fingernails or sassy toenails makes me beam. It's ridiculously inconsequential when taking in the broad scope of life, but it makes me feel so much better.
Adequate. More equipped to meet the task I must face and conquer that puppy.

You better believe I'll be sporting a new mani/pedi before ACFW conference next fall and homeschool prom this spring! Oh yeah!

It's the same thing with my manuscript. I know I've mentioned some of these tips before, but they are a timely reminder for me! This isn't the revision part of my project - the rewriting that takes my draft and puts it in a completed story form. I've finished major rewrites, but now I'm on a word hunt for any extra faux pas that I can fix.

First, I look for verb choices. I do a FIND action in Word and look for all of my wases and weres. Some of them need to stay, but I go through all of them to see if an alternative is better. I do the same thing with could, should, and would.

Next, a search for my pet words comes up. Mine are at least, and just. But I'm also guilty of repeating great words too quickly. It's not that they're pets. They got into my head and got used again to close to where they had been used before. That's a hard one because I don't know what word they are. It and that are search subjects, too. If I can eliminate them entirely, I do.

I don't stop with that polish, though. Checking out the beginnings of my paragraphs and my sentences to look for too much repetition is essential.

Finally, I check the endings of my sentences and especially my paragraphs to make sure I ended on strong words. Ideally, the strongest of the sentence.

So I'm putting on the final clear coats and giving Cat's Eyes a quick buff before placing it on my shelf. No, I'm not done with it. This one's good. It will be on a real shelf some day. But now it needs a brother or a sister to join it! :)

What are some of the key ways you polish?

The KEY!

While I've been treading water, I haven't felt that I'm really accomplishing my goals like I have in the past. I didn't set specific daily revision counts and wouldn't have met them if I had because I haven't been working in a daily manner on anything. Lack of consistency.

And consistency is KEY!

It's not like I've been inconsistent in everything. That's not the case. I've been posting a blog article everyday. I've gotten much better at visiting other blogs, though I'm still not where I'd like to be on

Writer Tip: Avoiding Insults

I turned on a detective movie from the 30's last weekend to give me some noise while I worked through my research. I swear the movie-goers of the 30's must have been ignorant. Or at least the people in Hollywood THOUGHT they were ignorant. (Which is doubtless the truth.)

What I'm talking about is treating the reader, or in this case the viewer, as though they are incapable of logical thought.

In one scene, a man is tying his shoe. Picks up his

Writer Tip - Those Pesky Little Details

My romantic suspense is starting to take a better shape. I really love the way the revision process tightens up my story. By the time I got to the end of the draft, the beginning needed considerable changes. I've made it halfway through chapter five and the beginning is finally matching the ending.

Except for the little details that I added without thinking. Eye color, tablecloths or pictures. Even "walk-on" characters have changed from the beginning to the ending.

• First and worst are all of those minor characters. I think my heroine's best friend had two first names and three last ones. The florist had two, one male and one female. While my hero's parents kept their

Writing Tip and ROW80 Update

I'm still struggling to keep up with my revision schedule, enough to blow it off and just keep swimming. I doubt I'll finish the revisions by the end of the month, but I hope to get halfway. However, I've only added 1 page of revision since Sunday. I think I'm getting a touch of Christmas fever!

On the flip side, my critique group liked the next section of my romantic suspense, Cat's Eyes. I think I've got a pretty solid

foundation at this point. 

For my exercise, I missed one day out of the two since Sunday. 

For my Christmas goals, we didn't get the decorating done, but we're on our way. I must finish some scrapbook pages immediately, and plan to bake over the weekend.

I completed my blog goals of finishing the book review on Protection for Hire - see it HERE - and finishing my first Vlog - see it HERE! I really do love blogging!

I'm in the middle of some intensive revisions. My ms is complete and it's better than its older brother by a long-shot. Still, I have much to accomplish on it. My goal was to revise ten pages per day, but I find I tend to go back over the same ten pages, trying to get them perfect. Which leads me to my writing tip for today.

(No, I'm not tackling perfectionism. Unless there's a couch and a doctor with a notepad.) 

I've actually got a revision list. I've signed up for an editing accountability group through ACFW and the lady leading it mentioned a check list for revisions. I've never used one, but I do tend to list the changes I make after the fact. 

In my first story, passive voice kept me up at nights. I eliminated 3,000 passive verbs. That's a lot of wases! At first happy with the tossing of was and were, I soon became enlightened to could, should, and would. I got away with a few less-used ones, but still tightened many of those as well. After several passes through my manuscript, I wrote down all of the items I checked for and changed. I ended up with 17 revisions. Some of them were easy like changing the name of my town. These are a few of them.

1. Exclamation points - eliminate all or most
2. Eliminate was and were as often as possible, and always when coupled with an -ing verb following
3. Scan for overused words - back, out, started, began, eyes, face, turned, at least (just a few of my precious pets!)
4. Vary sentence beginnings and paragraph beginnings
5. Check sentences starting with The
6. Check sentences starting with pronouns
7. Check sentence endings - use strong words
8. Reduce it, that, these, those, this

With my current revision, I'm using my list above. Once I pass through my chapters for these topics, I've come up with a few new, harder topics to deal with. 

1. Flow of scene - does the tension amp up and fade? (Ebb and flow, but I don't live on the coast.)
2. Cliff hanger - do I offer bookmark pages, or does the action keep pulling readers back inside?
3. Heroine - Have I gotten deep enough into her psyche to allow readers to feel what she's feeling?
4. Hero - Have I been faithful to a male POV. Does my character ring true?
5. Are my characters consistent? If not, is there a good reason for the inconsistency?
6. Avoiding minutia - I'm a detail person, but stating the number of steps someone took or defining the exact shade of blue on a table cloth doesn't make for very interesting reading. 
7. Showing vs. Telling - for me, this is an intentional trip through my chapters, analyzing a sentence at a time to evaluate whether it works. Have I crawled into POV deeply enough?
8. Head-hopping and author intrusion need to go on this list, though I don't often have to deal with those issues.

What are the pet problems you have to look out for in your writing?

Tightening Things Up

My critique group is invaluable. These ladies have inspired and challenged me like nobody's business. Their goal is to find anything that might be caught by a reader that makes the narrative stumble. It can be anything as small as a comma or as huge as shallow characters. They catch POV head-hopping, author intrusion, and continuity issues. Though they, thankfully, don't have to catch those issues very often!

What I hear most often is "tighten it up." It took awhile for me to figure out the aspects of those

words, but I think I've identified them all.

• First, tightening means to remove extraneous words like that used in the sentence: Bagging the groceries that she bought, Mira overstuffed a paper sack. Other extraneous words are more valuable, but often overused. Though different for every writer, they fill the pages like pet words. For me, I can find many excessive uses of just, at least, really, only and most other words ending in ly. 
• Second, my crit gals suggest using vivid verbs. Eliminating passive sections pushes the action forward. I'm getting pretty good at removing was and were, but the could, should, would verbs still give me fits. Still, they mostly gotta go!
• I have several buddies who are it-Nazis. Because of their devotion to removing the word, along with that, this, these, and those, my manuscript has great focus, with interesting nouns to go along with my vivid verbs.

For the most part, I need to make every stinkin' word intentional. Each sentence needs to be organized in such a way to capitalize on the best parts while remaining purposeful. It's a balancing act. And the revising that I'm doing right now exactly hits these challenges. 

Here are some examples from the critique that I enjoyed last week along with my changes.

• (Before) Ray recognized the village name. He hoped that hadn’t been their destination.
  (After) Ray recognized the village name. He hoped Miguel had a different destination planned.
• (Before) He didn’t know who or how many, but people had died there. 
  (After) He didn’t know who or how many, but people died in that little stucco building.
• (Before) The little used road gave direction, but if Miguel could find it, the hooded men would have no problem. 
  (After) The little-used road gave direction, but if Miguel could find the washed-out, two-rutted track, the hooded men would have no problem.
• (Before) That worked in their favor, too.
  (After) Sunset worked in their favor, too. 

I think my biggest problem with comprehending the instructions about tightening is my preconceived notion that the word means to reduce my writing. Shortening my work isn't the goal. The aim is to make sure that the story is clearly told. Sometimes that means to remove unnecessary words, but more often I need to focus the words, writing with passion and a narrow target.

What does the term "Tightening" mean to you?

Write Tip: It's a Process - New Goals!

I teach a high school writing class. Have had some of the brightest writers involved, but every year, I have to teach them the Writing Process. We spend a while discussing Planning tricks, ways to get their thoughts in order and collect some topics for their writing. They find out quickly that turning in a Draft is unacceptable. (I have a pretty high standard.) After only a few classes, they start taking advantage of sending their work to me for notes on Revision. I'll usually give them some Edit notes as well before they turn in their Final Work.

My students have figured it out. They now completely realize the benefits of each step in the process.

I've learned the benefits, too.

Unravel the Mystery of Grammar!

I love my critique group. Like superheroes they open their laptops and design wit and wisdom through every line! With their help, I will avoid the neon signs marking novice writing and glaring amateurish errors. Here's what I learned just last night:

• Make every word count.
• Keep statements turned toward the positive side.
• Cut up three-line sentences.
• Start sentences with intention.
• End with strong words.
• Avoid using pronouns to begin or end sentences.
• Avoid using it or this anytime
• Avoid repeating words - oops.
• Use a comma before the word "and."
• Don't apply quotations marks outside of dialogue - oops, again.
• Action verbs intensify sentences.
• Eliminate passive, helping verb usage with -ing words following.

Checklist gold, the expert suggestions from this group confirm one major truth.

 . . . I still have a lot to learn!

What suggestions can you add to the list? What grammatical tidbit wormed it's way into your noggin lately?

Break Out the Pom Poms!

Done.

Oh that word - like sweet melodies or cascading water whispering peace against anxiety.

After four months of writing and five months of rewriting, I actually called it out and sent away the final copies of my novel to a group of beta readers.

Breathe.

It's like the time when I watched my handsome boy sing his first solo. Glad, anxious,

A Stiff Breeze

The wind came through from the north yesterday. The skies are still clear and the sun bright, but the temperature refreshes instead of burdens.

Yesterday, we sat out on the porch several times, all through the day, without a problem. This morning I tried it a gain, but I was finally driven inside . . .

Literary Contortions

Jody Hedlund's article on flexibility inspired another article by Elizabeth Spann Craig. Her article inspired me, as I happened to read it first. Both are excellent and worthy of your time.

Both blog authors are also published authors and write from their publishing experiences. I'm still in the pre-published stage, so I have a different slant on the flexibility focus.

When I started this journey, now about 2 1/2 months ago, I felt totally alone.  I know my forte is brainstorming and building ideas with others, but writing is a solitary career, right?