Writing News
After a marvelous Christmas break I got back into writing with a totally different type of edit. I bought the book “Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook” by Donald Maass and am taking my novel through about 30 exercises that he has all lined out in his workbook. Each exercise is a complete chapter with examples from best selling fiction and then questions and suggestions for improving that particular area of your manuscript. This week I did the chapters on “Adding heroic qualities to your hero”, “Opening extra dimensions in your characters”, and “Creating Inner Conflict in your characters”. I also worked on part of the next chapter but didn’t quite finish. I went through this workbook with my last manuscript and loved it. It makes the edits fresh and adds tons of wonderful stuff to your work. Fun fun fun. This was a good way to come back to work after a lovely but flu-filled break.
Kristen, I would LOVE to read your novel sometime!
We so enjoyed your Christmas letter and I was thinking all the way through, oh how I wish she had a blog… Lucky me when I got to the end! 🙂
I look forward to following the adventures of your daily life and hearing more about your writing. I’m with you, a good book and about anything else makes for a great day…
So true. It was a happy day in the history of our marriage when I realized that reading is all I really want to do to relax. My husband kept offering graciously to watch the boys so that I could go out with girlfriends and play board games until 2:00am or watch movies or play paintball. Then I realized that there actually was something I could negotiate for…reading time. Ahhh books, ambrosia for the mind.