I got two devotionals done this week. I wanted to do four, but I’ll take the two and work toward four next week. But I did stumble over an invaluable idea this week. Each devotional is supposed to have thee sections: a verse, a story, and the serious spiritual bit. Well, I decided to do the verse and the serious bit for all of the rest of them and then do all of the stories at once (revising the ones I’ve already done) and make the small stories come together to tell a big story. So that one section of the devotional will read like a novel. So I’ll need to come up with a story arc and plot points and character development just for those little snippets. I’m excited, this will make it a much better read. So, that was my brilliant idea this week, we’ll see how it turns out.
Category Archives: Writing News
Writing News
Kind-of a boring week, but I did get some work done on my devotional idea. It uses a fun extended metaphor that I think will appeal to Jr. High and H.S. boys and so the writing is enjoyable to create. Long way to go though. Long long long way to go.
Writing News
This week I worked a little bit on my devotional idea, interiewed one of our counselors about a recent trip to Mexico (she brought me back a coke can full of dirt!), and read some good books. I’ m eager to get my critiques back and get back to work on my story. But for the moment, the devotional will have to do. And the reading, apparently you even learn stuff while reading. Yeah books!
Writing News
Despite a trip to a friends house I managed to write almost every day this week. Worked on my weird devotional book idea and convinced an artistic friend to draw this amazing picture to go with a writing idea. Considering the fact that I can barely draw stick figures myself and that the sketch she whipped out in just one night looks completely awesome and beyond professional, I’d say I accomplished quite a lot this week.
Writing News
I had several sick days this week, but still managed to write one quite rough devotional and do a good deal of research on the process of decomposition for the human body. After said research I wish to let it be known that I am all the way for cremation! Or freeze-drying. Did you know that in an attempt to be environmentally responsible, they are now dipping corpses into liquid nitrogen to freeze them and then smashing them with giant smashing things into powder and then you can be scattered in your garden as fertilizer? Very cool. If smashing is affordable, I want to be smashed. Doesn’t put all that nasty embalming fluid into the soil or soot from burning into the atmosphere. And you get to fertilize the soil as God intended. Fascinating indeed. All together, a good but somewhat disgusting week of research and writing.
Writing News
This week I finished putting those pesky notes into my writer’s notebook file on my computer. Then I started a new writing project to keep me busy in between full-length novel projects. The all-powerful experts in the How-to-Write books claim that one should write something totally different as one is waiting for feedback to come from one’s beta readers. And so I started my “totally different” project by thinking up a pseudonym and taking author photos for that pseudonym (not of me) and messing with the line spacing button in Microsoft Word for over an hour (I can only function in Word 97) before I got a title page completed and a few bible verses looked up for a quirky and somewhat nauseating devotional book for teenage boys…thus the pseudonym. Anyway, I’m writing, I’m having fun, I’m practicing my craft. All that good stuff is steadily occurring despite the agonizing wait for feedback. And thus my devotional book is a success, even if no one but yours truly ever sees the results of my endless typing, research, and repeated pressing of the 1.0 button in the spacing section of the top bar.
Writing News
This week I…um…pretty much just slept. Yep, you heard me. It took three days of getting 10 and a 1/2 hours a night before I could even make it through my day in a coherent manner. I was so exhausted after a completely awesome week of High School camp. I’m definitely getting too old for this, but I wouldn’t have traded that week for the world. So after sleeping a bunch The Hunky Hubby and I slept over at camp with the boys in a cabin which they have been begging to do for years and then I took the boys to visit Grandma Judy and had an unexpected emergency room visit and so this week for writing…I blogged some and I added a few of the ideas I had scribbled on napkins and sticky notes into my computer data base of brilliant writing material and that was pretty much it. Next week…less sleeping and more writing! Lord willing.
Writing News
This week I finished Rough Draft #6 of my manuscript. And so now I shall take a break to gain some perspective and let my beta readers read and strangely enough to council a cabin full of high school girls for a week. This revision took my manuscript from 86,785 words and 314 pages to 87,702 words and 314 pages. Not sure why the page count didn’t go up? Strangeness.
Writing News
This week I polished chapters 14-30 in rough draft #6. This revision should ensure that there is tension on every page and double check that each paragraph and word is the best possible. I’m getting close.
Writing News
This week I continued to work on my tension tune-up/paragraph polish revision. I make sure that every page has tension within and look at each paragraph of that page checking for coherence; a beginning, middle, end structure; and just ensure that my word choices are exactly what I had wanted. I made it to page 132. My goal is to revise 10 chapters a week and be finished before my beta readers return my manuscripts. Oh, and I had the startling realization that halfway through my manuscript I accidentally changed the name of my villain to the name of my grandfather’s best friend. I didn’t even realize that I knew his last name until I saw a letter from him on Grammy’s table and was horrified to think that I had accidentally vilified him. He is a nice Grandpa man in a nursing home, but somehow his name popped into my head and I typed it. So I changed it back and all is well once more.
