This is kind of an oops because I intended to post yesterday and pre-schedule one for this morning too, but somehow it just went from Monday to Wednesday midday without me noticing.
Anyway…
The Blogs
Today’s post over at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers blog is by monthly contributor and urban fantasy author Kerry Schafer. She has some excellent advice for writers on handling stress. “Managing Writer Stress — Breathing” can be found at: http://www.rmfw.org/managing-writer-stress-breathing/.
My guest blogger tomorrow is award-winning author of historical fiction/romance Pam Nowak. Her post focuses on crafting great fiction based on real-life events.
Lynn Carlson has a wonderful post at Northern Colorado Writers‘s The Writing Bug, called “Your Life, with Writing.” Lynn’s six steps for finding time to write involve making it fun. That works for me.
My Writing Plan
July 30th I wrote a post called “I Don’t Know What to Write Next.”
I finally made up my mind. I have a historical novel called Wishing Caswell Dead that I’ve rewritten five times. I have now retrieved version three and will keep that format and POV.
Sometimes we don’t see when it’s time to make the shift from rewrites to self-editing. That’s how we write the life out of our novels, and I feel I did that starting with version four. One of my mistakes was to change the main character POV from first to third, and I lost her voice in the process. Another mistake was to take the advice of a couple of my critique groups members (members who have moved on and are no longer writing) who insisted my novel genre was women’s fiction when my gut kept telling me it belonged in historical crime fiction–a “who’s gonna do it?” instead of a “who dunnit?”
I’m feeling pretty good about my decision. I printed out that third version and submitted the first three chapters to my critique group to get feedback from the four new members who’ve never read it. At that point, I’ll start my line-by-line, page-by-page tuning and polishing. And I already know where I’m going to submit it first.
Time to get to work.
Lizy, I need to make a whole list for submissions in case that first one doesn’t turn out so well. Good luck to you on your rewrite.
Hi Margot. Pam’s post was helpful to me as I get busy with my historical manuscript. I used a lot of real events in that novel.
Pat – Sometimes we have the right instinct about our writing in the first place. I’m glad you’ve realised what you need to do to bring your novel alive again. I’m looking forward to Pam’s post tomorrow.
Changing the POV is what I’m doing right now in a rewrite. I’ve even renamed my novel. It didn’t feel right before but now it feels promising. Not perfect – that comes later – but promising. So good luck to both of us – and you know where you’re going to send yours? Splendid – wish I did. 🙁
Julie, Kerry’s article couldn’t have been timed better.
Hi Alex. It was a mistake I’ll probably never make again. Luckily, I always start a new file with a version number in the title so I can always go back.
I can’t imagine going back and changing the point of view in a manuscript. Glad you found the point from which you can make it work.
I love reading about how other writers look at the editing process. I also am glad to know you were able to step back and reconsider your critique group’s thoughts (or certain member’s thoughts and opinions). It’s just a good learning process for me to read about how other writers go through this.
Kerry’s article today on stress and taking time to breathe and relax was perfectly timed for me.