Jane Yolen's Blog, page 25

August 13-24, 2010:

This is what happens when I am head-down in a revision. Well, three revisions, really. Days and days of cutting, hacking, sawing, sanding, pasting, un-gluing, the usual.

The initial part of the revision consisted of reading through beta-reader Debby's major comments, which were mostly about the first half of the book, and understanding the problems therein: getting rid of the father's pieces and concentrating on the three women whose story it truly is, as well as fixing the forward motion...

August 4-12, 2010:

I have been busy with guests and stuff since finishing the novel. Things like tea with a friend and neighbor who's moving back to the States, old Hitchcock movie with  Nora, one evening at the Pittenweem Arts Festival with Bob and Deb, their son Matthew, and their friend Steve, and then again the next day with Pam. I actually bought a piece which is a first for me!

I had six YA fantasy writers over for lunch on Sunday, and one–Lisa Tuttle–stayed overnight. We called it the First Annual...

Intersitital Moment:

This is a poem about the gull George that I fed and took care of in the garden till he was ready to fly off.

Goodbye to the Gulls

For two weeks, down the flue,

from their nest on the chimney pots,

the black-backed gulls cackled and called,

spitting out bird words—food, flight, danger.

When the baby slipped down the slant

of the canted roof and landed in the patio,

Aal fluff and legs, screaming for food,

his beak wide open for hours at a time,

I thought I'd go mad with the noise.

Yet for three long...

July 27-August 3, 2010:

Boy, have I been head down and working on Snow in Summer, writing about 1500 words every two days, setting the words down the first day, revising the next, dreaming of the chapter to come, figuring out the ending. And yes, Dear Readers, I did get the complete draft down, just a bit over 40,000 words, right on target.

Now the book is with my beta reader, Deborah (Debby) Turner Harris.(She's my plot guru, too.) So I am hoping what she has to say won't be too onerous. I have the next two weeks...

July 21-26, 2010:

A very busy six days, both personally and book-wise.

Books:

I was mostly head down in the novel–Snow in Summer–and went from the 22,000 words of the last report here to 32,000 and heading toward the ending which will probably be about 5-10,000 more words. Along the way, I have twice upped the age of the main character and may need to do it again. That turns out to mean  quite a lot of juggling but I see that I cannot (for the plot's sake) let my main character remain with the miners for two...

July 17-20, 2010:

I was determined with the house empty to return in depth to the revision of the first 20 chapters of Snow in Summer. And  did (more about that later), but I also had a lot of other work to tidy up, including revising for a last time the short story "Dog Boy Remembers" which is based on a character in Except the Queen, dealing with last revisions on Last Laughs and on Last Dragon (boy I hope they don't come out in the same season!), and on Twinspiration. There was the pdf of the new book with ...

July 1-16, 2010:

Apologies, apologies, apologies. I plead tourist insanity. I plead business. I plead sluggishness, I plead exhaustion, I plead. . .the Fifth.

And of course I cannot remember all that has happened in the past sixteen days, so this will perforce be a quick catchup.

First touristy stuff: As the girls were here for two weeks, of course I had to do stuff with them, complicated by the fact that Heidi really didn't know how to drive on the left side of the road. So if there was driving to be done, I h...

June 22-30, 2010:

I have been so engrossed in working on my novel (up to 22,000 words so far) I have forgotten to do things like update my journal. But tonight–knowing I am about to go off and do touristy things with Maddison and Heidi who have just arrived–I thought I'd better do a catch up.

Books:

For a while I thought I was doing just fine on the novel. Chapters were spilling out of me. The snake-handling sect chapter seemed pretty darn good. Chilling and awe-filled at the same time. I've been reading three d...

June 19-21, 2010:

The weather has turned gorgeous. Sun, deep blue skies, hardly a cloud, but enough of a sea breeze to keep things from being hot. There aren't usually a lot of these kind of days in a row in Scotland, so most people make the best of them.

Me? I was writing of course. Got almost another 2,000 words forward (and a lot of back-filling as well) on the novel. Finished the Gator proposal. Started looking through more of Jason's photos for another new project. Consulted with two friends on books they ...

June 16-18, 2010:

The writing was going well. I had gotten to over 15,000 words done on the novel. Though to be honest, most of the last work was not actually moving forward. I was back-filling, interweaving, deepening characters, putting in small scenes to sharpen motive, etc. Taking stuff out and adding only a very few new things in.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I was stuck. Where to go next? Well, actually, I have the overarching plot already. The novel is based on a published short story of mine. And ...