Karen GoatKeeper's Blog - Posts Tagged "editing-books"
November Madness Returns
Another year has flown by. It is again November and time for National Novel Writing Month.
This year is different for me. I’m trying to finish the draft I started last November, the one I planned to finish over this year. It got shoved aside.
That does not mean the year was bereft of writing. Indeed, I have completed two other books this year.
“My Ozark Home” is a coffee table book of photographs and haikus with several personal essays about living here in the Ozarks. Surely this is a nothing book to complete. All you do is slap a bunch of photographs in some order, write six or eight pages about whatever, devise a few poems and publish.
I do meet people who believe this. They don’t write.
Choosing the photographs took weeks of sorting, comparing, replacing, reordering. Matching haikus with the photographs was a bit easier. Grouping the photographs and adding personal essays was a challenge. There were several ways to try until I found one that worked for me.
“Mistaken Promises” was a different challenge. It is the third in a series and completes a story line begun in the second book. This one was a NaNo draft novel that fell apart about 50,000 words in. The story was fine. The bully wasn’t the intended girl. So the book languished as the plot formed and reformed in my mind.
Once the plot was complete, the rewrites and edits began. This is another misconception non-writers have about writing. A book isn’t written in one shot. Many times the completed book bears little resemblance to the original draft.
A series book has other considerations. Characters from one book don’t change names or personalities between books unless there is a good reason given in the book.
Grammar and spelling, those bugaboos from school days are alive and well for the writer. I’ve tried to read books with grammatical and spelling errors in them. They ruin the book.
In researching about writing I keep coming across these admonitions to write a book in a few months. I can’t seem to get below six months and then have reservations.
Maybe this visit with the Carduans will complete the first book. I hope so as I already have notes on the second book. Captain Umbaque is right that nine people are not enough to start a viable colony, but additional people bring additional problems. At the moment finding a place to live is the important task, one complicated by their small size and vulnerability to predators, their unfamiliarity with so much of what the Ozarks has to offer and their own reactions to being stranded with no hope of going home.
This year is different for me. I’m trying to finish the draft I started last November, the one I planned to finish over this year. It got shoved aside.
That does not mean the year was bereft of writing. Indeed, I have completed two other books this year.
“My Ozark Home” is a coffee table book of photographs and haikus with several personal essays about living here in the Ozarks. Surely this is a nothing book to complete. All you do is slap a bunch of photographs in some order, write six or eight pages about whatever, devise a few poems and publish.
I do meet people who believe this. They don’t write.
Choosing the photographs took weeks of sorting, comparing, replacing, reordering. Matching haikus with the photographs was a bit easier. Grouping the photographs and adding personal essays was a challenge. There were several ways to try until I found one that worked for me.
“Mistaken Promises” was a different challenge. It is the third in a series and completes a story line begun in the second book. This one was a NaNo draft novel that fell apart about 50,000 words in. The story was fine. The bully wasn’t the intended girl. So the book languished as the plot formed and reformed in my mind.
Once the plot was complete, the rewrites and edits began. This is another misconception non-writers have about writing. A book isn’t written in one shot. Many times the completed book bears little resemblance to the original draft.
A series book has other considerations. Characters from one book don’t change names or personalities between books unless there is a good reason given in the book.
Grammar and spelling, those bugaboos from school days are alive and well for the writer. I’ve tried to read books with grammatical and spelling errors in them. They ruin the book.
In researching about writing I keep coming across these admonitions to write a book in a few months. I can’t seem to get below six months and then have reservations.
Maybe this visit with the Carduans will complete the first book. I hope so as I already have notes on the second book. Captain Umbaque is right that nine people are not enough to start a viable colony, but additional people bring additional problems. At the moment finding a place to live is the important task, one complicated by their small size and vulnerability to predators, their unfamiliarity with so much of what the Ozarks has to offer and their own reactions to being stranded with no hope of going home.
