R.L. LaFevers's Blog, page 31

Small Epiphany

I had a breakthough this morning, and while I'd love to be able to crow about it, it was actually too much of a d'oh! moment to warrant legitimate crowing.

In this YA I've been working on (for years!) I've really vacillated back and forth about how much my heroine should trust/suspect one of the other characters. I swear, I've written is six times, switching back and forth each time.

But today, after having not looked at the mss for about six weeks, it became embarrassingly clear: put the d@man va

Protect The Work - Even the Early Stuff

I've talked to two newish writers in the last couple of weeks, and have been strongly reminded of how important it is to protect your early writing efforts from too much feedback and too many rules. Both can be deadly.

Just as you don't take newborns out too early to expose them to gawd-knows-what kind of germs and contagions in crowded public places, so should you protect your work. Yes, even your early crappy work, because buried deep in there somewhere is the seed of the writer you'll become.

Tuesday Hodge Podge

So I sent Beastologist III off to my editor yesterday! Yeay! I was fairly happy with it, which doesn't always happen. (It also makes me nervous, as if I have some huge blindspot.)

My first email this morning was a copy of a tear sheet from Scholastic Parent and Child Magazine. Nathaniel Fludd is being featured! Very cool to wake up to! (Did I also mention that Nathaniel Fludd was a Junior Library Guild selection? Can't remember if I did or not, but that's always a huge honor.)

Today I am diving ri

The Art of Revising - Polishing

Ideally, it's best to read the whole manuscript out loud. You won't believe how many things you'll catch that way! However, I don't always have time to do that, I'll admit…what I do try to check for is:

Typos and misspellings

Weak words, especially verbs

Awkward phrasing

Wordy sentences (This is my Achilles heel. Bet you couldn't have guessed that...)

Overwriting

Adverbs (Although I must state I have a great fondness for adverbs. But the strong, expressive ones, not weak ones. Although sometimes I thi

Brass Tacks

I think one of the reasons I work so hard to break down the steps involved in the craft of writing is that it IS mysterious and can feel impenetrable, especially when you're standing on the outside looking at the process and trying to understand just HOW one goes about making leaps in one's abilities.

Part of this is fueled by my own experiences. The VERY day my first book came out, it got an absolutely vicious, savage review. One that not only made it clear what they thought of the book, but wa

The Art of Revising - Micro Revision

Micro revision is all about the scene. Is the scene—the building block of my novel—working? Is it carrying its weight? Has it earned its place in the story? This is also where I check for dropped plot threads or un-fleshed out characters.

However, you only do this once you've hammered out the story, otherwise the focus of the scene might shift.

The first thing to check is that you have indeed written in scenes and not in one long, every minute accounted for stretch from beginning to end. You only

The Art of Revising - Macro Revision

As I mentioned yesterday, the single most important thing you can do o help the revision process is give yourself the gift of distance. A month is ideal. Two, even better. In a pinch, a week can suffice.

Once you have a completed draft, it's time to look at what you actually managed to get out of your head onto the paper. Or if the idea holds up under daylight. Or if there's really as much there there as you'd hoped. Distance helps you obtain a higher level of objectivity with which to do that.

Re

The Art of Revising

I so wanted to add In The Rain to that blog title, but since it isn't raining anywhere near here, it didn't really work. That's a writer's lot in life, isn't it? Having to sacrifice cleverness for clarity. Anywhoo...

My Lovely Agent and I were talking on the phone the other day about revising, and how difficult it can be for newer writers to understand the different between truly revising a manuscript and merely polishing it. Since I'm up to my elbows in revisions this week and it's a subject tha

Monday Randomness

I was a bit of a slacker about blogging last week. Sorry about that. I promise to do better this week. One of the reasons was life got a tad busy. Number One Son came home from school, accompanied by about ten boxes of stuff. Thank gawd I de-cluttered about fifteen boxed worth of stuff a few weeks ago or there wouldn't have been any room.

And speaking of de-cluttering, I did a little more last week, cleaning out all my old writing notebooks, mostly for stories I've given up on or books I've finis

Lost Words

I have lost my words. It's making me insane. They used to come so quickly, I couldn't type fast enough to keep up with them. Now, I have to sit and think and fumble and grope. Argh! It's torture!

I'm not sure if I've used them all up (Just how many is one's lifetime allotment of words, anyway?) or need to fill the well or what, but it's making me insane.

(Just to be clear, this isn't writer's block, it's can't-find-the-right-word syndrome.)

If you find my words, will you let me know?? Because I kin