My Five Favorite Words

When I write, I have to be really cognizant of how much I use my four favorite words.

1. Really
2. Just
3. That
4. Totally
5. Actually

In case you missed it, I used really already in the first sentence of this blog post. I seriously love that word. I don't try too hard to avoid these words as I write because there are enough other things I need to worry about that are more important. What I do is while I'm revising, I'll run a search and hunt down these words.

This is the same time when I'll do a search for character's names to make sure the hero and heroine aren't addressing each other by name too often because people don't talk like that in real life. If you pay attention to conversations, especially those between two people, you'll notice that names are rarely used. I like my dialogue to be realistic, and while I do a pretty good job on the name thing, it still creeps in.

Also, each book seems to develop its own favorite word. This one I need to be aware of because it's different for each story and isn't on my list to search for until I can identify it. I'm not sure how this happens, but it does without fail.

Just one of the many reasons that revisions (and editors) are an author's best friend.

Tweaking Versus Revision

"A piece of writing is never finished, only abandoned."

Please forgive the unattributed quote. I only had time to do a quick Google search and didn't find any definitive answers as to who said this.

This popped into my head on Monday as my one quick pass through my proposal chapter ended up taking my entire lunch hour. And this was after it took 5 hours of my day on Saturday. I think every writer reaches a point where they're just fiddling with their work, not improving it.

I had to stop and think about whether or not this was what I was doing. After considering it, I decided no. I'm still making big enough changes to be real fine tuning, not just tweaking.

For me, the synopsis looms and I have to tackle that thing as soon as the story is ready to go. Synopses are a special kind of hell for a writer who falls on the Seat of the Pants side of the plotting spectrum. Why can't we write: and then some stuff happens, the h/h defeat the big bad, and live happily ever after? It's totally true and saves my brain from exploding.

That said, I will confess grudgingly to liking having a workable synopsis to use when I write. It helps narrow down the choices I have to make and keeps me on track. I still don't enjoy writing the things, though. The only word that fits is torturous.

Goal for the week is to get everything off to my agent before Sunday night. There. I said it.

Also, make sure you check in later this week for a special Black Friday Sale. One of my books will be marked down for a limited time. Announcement will be made Friday morning.

On Revision

This topic is a suggestion from Twitter. If you have anything you'd like me to blog about, feel free to leave a comment.

Revision is a vital part of the writing process, but it's also overwhelming to look at this 100,000 word (And in my case frequently well over 100,000 words) work and try to figure out where to start. With every single book I finish, it's as if I have to relearn how to revise my work.

The first thing I do is reread the entire story without touching anything. I have a pad of paper beside me and I make notes on what I want to fix. Depending on the project, I might print it out and read on paper, but I don't always do this. If I do have it in hard copy, I'll make small notes on the page. And by small, I mean nitpicky stuff like awkward sentences, repeated words, etc. Anything beyond this goes on the notepad.

After I finish the read through, I might need time to think about how I'm going to fix something. If it's big enough, I'll run it past a few writing buddies to get their opinions and to find out if I'm not seeing something in my solution that will cause trouble later.

Getting to the actual revisions. Daunting. Most of my books are well over 100,000 words--some more than others. Printed out, we're talking about darn close to a ream of paper and looking at it, I can't help but panic about how I'm ever going to fix something this size. That's when I start playing mind games with myself. I think of it in scenes.

That's not to say there isn't a change that will affect the entire book or at least a large portion of it. When I revised Ravyn's Flight I had to adjust more than half the book to foreshadow my hero's big secret, something he didn't bother to tell me until a couple of days before he revealed all to the heroine. This was a big enough event in his life that it would color everything for him in the situation Damon and Ravyn were in.

Or when I revised The Power of Two and had to adjust the entire book to accommodate the heroine's younger age. In the original draft, she wasn't 21.

So yes, big changes, but I still thought about it in this way: What do I have to do in this scene to fix it?

The initial, bit overhaul revision run goes in fits and starts. I will back up and re-edit a scene if something occurs to me later. This is where the hard lifting gets done, and when it's finished, I don't want to go back to it again.

Round two revisions are for medium revisions. If I have sentences or paragraphs that need to be cut or rearranged, this is when it happens. This is also when I'll hit awkward sentences that weren't addressed in the big overhaul. Again, I think only in scenes. Anything bigger than that make my brain lock up and protest: "hey, this is too huge!"

By the time I do my third (and probably final revision run), there should be nothing but tweaking and fine tuning. Smoothing things out, replacing duplicate words, fine tuning transitions. This is actually my favorite part of revising.

Then the story is out the door and this whole cycle--including the initial panic--is repeated when I get the editorial revision letter.

When Is It Really The End?

Art is never finished, only abandoned ~ Leonardo da Vinci

I would paraphrase this to say "No book is ever finished, it's just abandoned or published."

I'm going to talk a little bit about my revision process and when I send the manuscript out the door. Or in other words, when is done really done. I'll preface this post by saying every writing is different and you should do what works for you. Always do what works for you.

The process I use is one I adopted because I have an enormous problem with perfectionism. When I wrote, I would get a scene or maybe a chapter down and the revise the heck out of it. By the time I was done tinkering with it, I'd 1) drained all the life out of the writing and 2) gotten so sick of the flipping story, that I'd hop to another story.

I have a lot of one chapter stories started.

Finally, I had to take a good, hard look at what I was doing and I realized I couldn't allow myself to revise scene by scene or chapter by chapter--not if I ever wanted to finish a story. And so my process was born and I discovered something major along the way.

The rule I set for myself was I could do light revisions on what I'd written the previous day, but then I had to keep moving forward. My mantra became: It can all be fixed on revision. And I had to repeat it a lot.

There are writers who do their revisions as they go along and when they're done with a story, they truly are done. I'm not one of them and I can't be trusted to do it that way. My streak of perfectionism has only gotten worse, not better. However, I'm sure even these authors do a light run through before they send it off.

So my process is I write the first draft, with only light revisions on the scene or chapter I'm working on. If something big occurs to me in a later chapter that needs to be added in earlier, I make a note of it and I keep going.

When I finally reach the end of the first draft, I usually have a fair amount of things I want to fix. The major thing I learned as I wrote Ravyn's Flight? I learned that if I'd stopped and gone back to fix the first big thing that needed fixing, I would have had to go back a few more times to add in the other big stuff that popped up later. By waiting, I only had to go back and do the major revision work once.

In this first book, the first revision run was lengthy and it was extensive, but I learned a lot.

After round one of revisions came round two. On my early books, this was still a lot of work because my writing buddies always saw stuff I didn't, but after my first couple of books, this became less intensive. The nice thing about writing a few stories is how much you learn every step of the way. That's why I always recommend people try to write full stories. The middle will teach you different things than the beginning and the end has completely different lessons and so do revisions, etc.

Okay, so on the first book, the second round of revisions were also time consuming and extensive, but now the focus on round two for me is mostly on fixing transitions, smoothing sentences, cutting those paragraphs that I love, but that aren't needed in the story. Things like this.

When this is done, I do a polishing run. At this point, it's pretty light stuff and it goes fairly quickly. Then, no matter how great the temptation, that sucker is gone.

I almost never touch the manuscript while I'm waiting to hear back from my editor about her suggested revisions. I can only remember one time I violated this rule, but it was because as I was thinking about the story, a plot hole jumped out at me. I wanted to fix it before I forgot the solution. But normally I let the story rest for a while. This gives me a fresh perspective when I do get my editorial revisions and it also allows me to see things I couldn't spot while I was too close to the work.

I've almost always only gotten two weeks to finish editorial revisions, so there isn't time to over work the text.

After this comes copy edits where the story is gone over line by line for logic flaws, continuity issues, or grammatical problems. I try to turn in a very clean manuscript as far as grammar goes because I want the copy editor focused on the story itself.

Next comes the galleys, which are test prints of the book. No big changes can be made here unless it's extremely critical because every fix costs money unless it's a typo on the printer's part.

At this point, the book is finally done. Or maybe I should say the book is forcibly wrested from my hands and published. :-)

To Revise Or Not To Revise

There's a very interesting discussion happening on one of my author loops about how much revising to do to backlist titles where the rights have reverted to the author before putting them up in eBook format. And being writers, the topic split off into multiple directions. :-)

One conversational path was the technology issue. Some of these authors have contemporary romances or mysteries written in the 1980s and a cell phone changes a lot. There were authors who updated for the new tech and some authors who didn't. They made mention in the front that the book was originally published in 1980-something and left it at that.

It was the second direction in which the conversation veered that has me thinking. Should an author revise her story to fix the writing?

A writer should be pushing herself with each project, learning more with each story and that means the writing should be improving. The difference between later books is smaller than on earlier stories because there's more room for improvement, but there still should be growth.

This made me think of my first book, Ravyn's Flight. I have a really strong memory of moaning to a group of online friends that I wished I could rewrite it because I was a much better writer now. This would have been around 2003/2004 because I know I'd finished The Power of Two and I learned a lot writing that book.

An author on the board, one who's been published for many years, asked me a question: Did you do the best job you were capable of doing when you wrote the book?

Of course I did. I throw myself heart and soul into every story I write and I always strive to do the best work I'm capable of doing. I also tend to be a perfectionist, so I nitpick a lot at my work and always find more to pick at every step of the way.

So this author said, if you did the best you could, then you have to accept that your writing is better now and move on.

I took her advice and didn't spend much time after that looking in the rearview mirror. That work was in print and I had no way to go back and fix it even if I wanted to. Only now I have the rights back to my first four books and I'm going to either resell the rights or put them up in eBook format or something. Which has me thinking hard--what do I fix?

In books 2-4, I don't think I'd do much. I do know I'd tweak the language some, but while they're a little wordier than I write now, I don't feel any compelling need to rewrite them. And then there's Ravyn's Flight.

There are little things I'd do there, too, of course. There are things that happened between when I turned the book in and when I saw the galleys (test prints of the book where few changes are allowed) that I didn't do and I didn't like. For example, the two sentences that became one clunky, run-on sentence or the line I really liked that had a few words cut out of it, which left it a shadow of what I'd intended. But that's little stuff.

If I was writing RF now, it would be different. Maybe drastically different. Is that a can of worms that I want to open?

Part of me would love to take that story apart and put it back together again. I am a better writer, a better storyteller now.

Part of me thinks I shouldn't do more than the little tweaks no matter what. It isn't just tightening up the writing, I'd probably end up changing plot stuff and that impacts story and character. I'm not sure I want to go there. I've heard from so many readers who've told me how much they love the story. What if the changes I make ruin the book for them? And do I really want to create a drastically different version of my first book?

At the moment, I'm leaning toward no. The book was the best I could write at the time that I worked on it. Maybe that needs to be enough.

More Revision Talk

I started talking about revisions on Thursday and I thought I'd say a little more today. What I mentioned in that previous post is all normal and happens with every book, but my other revision task is far from my usual MO.

I always know whose book it is before I start writing. (One character always has a bigger growth arc than the other one. With my early books, I tried making the arcs equal, but I always had one character becoming more prominent and the other throttling back, so it's never worked out that way on the page. But this is another post for some other day.) That's what Pre-Book and all the thinking I do beforehand is for--to know the who, what, and why. This time, I had it wrong.

In all the scenes I was seeing (and I was seeing a lot of them), my heroine seemed so together and 90% of what I was getting at this point was from the hero's Point of View (POV). Both these things made me believe he was the one who needed to change the most. Only he wasn't sharing what his issue was. I didn't even have a hint. I came up with ideas that could be it, but they weren't. Finally, after thinking and pressing him, I figured it out. Yea!

Too bad it turned out to be really lame when I was trying to write the synopsis. Yes, it's an issue. Yes, it's something that won't be easily resolved, but I knew it would be a challenge to make work for the reader. It's exacerbated by the fact that h/h have never talked about it. The hero's reasons for not saying anything work for him (and for me), but for a reader? I'm not so sure about that.

An SOS was sent to my writing friends. The suggestion was to focus on the heroine's issue in the synopsis.

But she doesn't really have an issue.

I knew that was wrong. All characters have issues even if they're not working on them. I thought harder and came up with something. Hmm. I'd realized this before--pieces of it, at least--but I brushed right past them as being unimportant. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the heroine had a major issue. So major that it's her book.

It was quite a revelation.

A couple more conversations later and the story shifted. It's still the same story, the same plot elements, but the focus is different. And because of this, I have to rework the proposal chapters (the first three chapters of the book) with the heroine's growth arc in mind.

The things that kind of felt sort of wrong earlier? Yeah, they're completely wrong in light of this new revelation. Now I know why they felt off. When will I learn to trust my instincts?

Thinking About Revisions

I finally finished the synopsis from hell last Sunday. All synopses are horrible to write, at least for me, but this one was far worse than usual and I had to slog my way through it. I'll have to revise it since I came in much longer than I intended, but for now, I get to revise the proposal chapters.

There are a few things that are on the list to handle. This is typical. Stuff often crops up as I'm writing the synopsis that requires some adjustment in the chapters. Sometimes it foreshadowing, sometimes it's details, but there's usually something. Then there are revision comments from one of my writing buddies. Things that I knew, but forgot to explain for the reader (oops!), shifting stuff around, layering. Nothing that should be too difficult--really--but I realized something about myself.

I always feel overwhelmed after reading revision notes, no matter who they come from.

I kind of had to remind myself that this is normal and happens every book. What I need to do is read comments and do nothing else that day. Just let my brain simmer overnight. By the next morning, I usually can wrap my arms around what needs to be done, but I always need that 24 hours to process.

And yes, it did happen this time, too. I felt overwhelmed as I looked at all the comments, but by the next day, I was breaking it into chunks to help myself work out how to attack the changes. I'm not talking chapters here or even scenes. I'm chunking it down to scene segments, for example the beginning to where my heroine has her number called (she's waiting in line).

Revising 20 pages might seem overwhelming, but revising a couple of pages? Much more mentally doable.

Synopsis Hell - Over. Kind of.

I finished the synopsis for my next book this weekend and sent it off to my agent! This is huge because I've been fighting with this thing for weeks. It feels so good to have this off my To Do List, to not have to deal with the frustration as I fight with transitions or trying to figure out what goes exactly where. I think I can safely say that synopsis writing is my least favorite part of being an author and it's one of the most difficult things for me to do, but I guess it's a necessary evil.

Of course, even though I tried to cover all the bases in the synopsis and sent it to my writing buddy for a second set of eyes, it doesn't mean my agent won't have questions or things she thinks I can make stronger. Which means I might have this thing back at me for another pass. TBH, I'm hoping I don't get it back. I just want to start working on the actual story. I'm ready to really write, not synopsis write.

This week is also the week that I'm supposed to get revisions from my editor on Edge of Dawn and I am really ready for them. This is the last hard part in the process of getting a book together for publication. At least on my end of the deal. Edits are easier and galleys much, much easier. A book feels finished after revisions.

Focusing on the synopsis put me behind on other things, like email and housework and weeding, but they'll all be there tomorrow. Or the next day. :-)

The Title Is Official!

The title for my July 2009 book is now officially Edge of Dawn! I'm excited to finally have the for real title and the first thing I did today was update my website with the new information. Now I can't wait to see how the cover turns out. :-)

Today was a good day. I accomplished more on my synopsis than I have in days. The only thing I can think of that made things click is that I moved a paragraph down the page. That seemed to do it, but it's such a small thing to get things moving.

My goal is to finish the first draft of the synopsis on Friday, inflict it on my writing buddy, and work on polishing it this weekend. My revisions for Edge of Dawn (still cool to type the title ;-) are coming next week and I want the synopsis done before I'm neck deep in them. I'm looking forward to them. I have a few things I want to fix in the story, my agent sent me a few things she thought I could tweak, and with my editor's input, I'll be ready to go.

Too Tired to Happy Dog Dance

I emailed the revised version of In Twilight's Shadow to my editor last night. Late last night. I didn't quite finish my final smoothing run-through, but it was after 10pm and I wanted to go to bed. :-) I was almost all the way through, so hopefully I caught the parts that needed the most smoothing.

I'm so glad to be finished and I'm hoping that I fixed everything that needed fixing. :-) I'm ready for some time off!

Aside from cleaning the house, I have a long To Do List again. Working on revisions highlighted just how badly I need a coffee table, and since I have a small space, finding one that fits is going to be a huge challenge. I found that out the first day I went out looking. Even online searches haven't turned up anything, although if anyone is looking to build their own coffee table, plans are available free. ;-)

I'm hugely tired today, and although I should run a couple of errands during lunch, I don't think I'm going to. The idea of just vegging out at my desk for a while is appealing. Mondays are always rough for me.

Sunny Sunday

It took me forever to write about two pages yesterday, which was very frustrating, but at least the work on the actual scenes that needed fixing went quicker. I have a couple of comments from my writing buddy that I have to work on today, but once that's finished, it'll just be a final polishing read through.

After working for hours and hours, I went outside yesterday and sat on my deck for about an hour. Fabulous. There was a light breeze, the temperature was comfortable and I was able to watch the birds flying around. It was a nice way to unwind.

Has anyone else been getting the latest spam? The one where the note says, "I found you online and want to chat with you. I'm a 25 y.o. girl and want to show you my pictures." Or similar type words. This is lame enough, but what I find hilarious is that this 25 year old woman has first names like Jose or Carlos. Um, yeah, you might want to tweak your spam-ware so that it only uses female first names.

Teaser!

My super cool teaser for In the Midnight Hour is up on You Tube now! I'm hugely excited about this and I didn't want to say anything until I had it up on my website and MySpace page, but I just can't wait. Patience was never my strong suit, but the video did turn out great, if I say so myself. Midnight Hour Teaser.

I took yesterday afternoon and evening off from writing. I feel hugely guilty saying that because I have revisions due on Monday. I did work during my lunch hour at the EDJ and finished everything except the one section that's going to require a lot of effort and time to take care of. All the more reason to feel guilty, but I was so exhausted that I'd hose it up if I tried to tackle it. Whenever I try to work on anything when I'm tired, I hate everything and I start gutting it. Inevitably, when I've had more rest and look at what I've done, I have to restore the original version and start over. I figured I'd skip that step this time and just wait until I had some sleep.

So what did I do on my decadent time off? My dad and I cleaned off my chaise lounge and little plastic table and hauled it up onto the deck. I helped my dad hang my wind spinner (it's only been sitting on my counter since the beginning of May!). Okay, so my idea of helping with the wind spinner was saying, "it looks good there," but hey, it had to be done! I also watered my plants and did a couple loads of laundry, watched baseball and played Mah Jong.

Yeah, I know. There was some excitement, though. When I came inside for the evening and bent to put my wood in the patio door track, I discovered a wasp! I must have rolled the door right over him and killed it. The wasp being dead is a good thing. The wasp inside my house was not a good thing.

My dad transplanted more tiger lilies from his house to mine. He's filled the entire back half of the tree ring with them, so I guess I won't be buying any more flowers next year to fill that space as I'd thought I would.

A ton of work to do today on the book. I plan to finish that and then do one more read-through tomorrow before emailing it to my editor. I think I might have to post the dancing Hobbes gif again when I finish. I'm going to need to happy dance again. :-)

Trendy Names

I think I'm going to have a hero named Logan.

As a friend pointed out, the name is "trendy" which is something I'd like to stay away from.

He hasn't "announced" his name and he hasn't forced me to look through baby name books and become insistent on that moniker. This fooled me into thinking that maybe, just maybe, I might finally get to choose a name for one of my h/h. That would be a novel experience (no pun intended).

Instead, he suggested names that had me begging, "Please tell me your name really isn't ____" (fill in the blank). He even spoke in phony accents to fit these names. His suggestions included Nash (short for Nashville), Nevada, Reno, Nigel, etc. Do I need this?

As we've spent days playing these games, it's become surer and surer in my mind--his name is Logan. And trendy or not, it's fitting the man's personality. I can't really describe how that's so--at this point it's more a sense of him than anything I know concretely--but I'm about 90% certain right now that I'll be writing about a Logan. I can only hope that it's his last name and not his first, but I doubt I'll be that lucky.

I'm nearly finished with revisions. I've corrected all the small things and I really only have one item left on the "big" list. That one thing is probably going to be the most time consuming and difficult of them all, but I expect to have the file ready to mail back to my editor on Sunday night.

Yesterday, my dad dug out some tiger lilies from in front of his house and planted them on the backside of my tree ring. (The front side is filled with my lilies.) I don't know why he decided to do this, but it's nice to have some tall plants over there. :-) He also weeded out the garden for me and he's talking about bringing more over to plant today. Wow. I'm particularly appreciative of the weeding part because I was going to have to do that on Monday, after I'd finished revisions. Nice.

Culture Talk

I found out yesterday that the Pompeii exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota is open. I'd heard this was coming, but I was on deadline for In Twilight's Shadow and I completely forgot about it until I saw the article in the paper yesterday.

There was some other Pompeii exhibit that went through Chicago like a year or two ago. I heard about it after the fact, though, and hadn't gotten the chance to drive down to see it. I was disappointed by that because it sounded really interesting, but driving to St. Paul is much better than going to Chicago. :-) So it's all working out just fine. I'll be waiting to go until after the kids are back in school. :-) I'm thinking after Labor Day sometime.

I also discovered yesterday that the Guthrie Theater is doing a production of 1776. That's one of my favorite musicals ever! I even own the movie on DVD as well as having a couple of copies on VHS tape.

The Guthrie used to send me a mailing every year to let me know what shows are playing for the season, but I didn't get one this time around. :-( And when I went to check ticket availability on the theater website, all that dates I wanted to attend were marked "limited." :-( Guess I won't get to see 1776 live. That's a huge disappointment.

I found out about 1776 because the Guthrie Theater is on MySpace and sent out a bulletin. Now that's modern theater!

Revisions continue and I think they're going well enough. I'm actually thinking I might, just might, end up with enough time to do a straight read through for nitpicky smoothing stuff. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I have one more big, time consuming issue to tackle, and if that ends up being more difficult than I anticipate, that extra time might disappear.

My Fabulous RT Review!

I received a great review from Romantic Times BOOK Reviews for In the Midnight Hour!

O'Shea ratchets up the paranormal thrills with this inventive and clever new tale. In book after book, she's has been proving why she's destined to be a significant player in the paranormal genre. Rich with action, drama and passion, this is pure paranormal pleasure!

How cool is this???

My favorite parts are where Midnight Hour was called "inventive and clever" and the line where it says that I'm "destined to be a significant player in the paranormal genre."

The only downside is that something was revealed in the review that I wish wasn't. I knew it would happen and that it will probably occur in most of the reviews the book gets because the event happens in the first three chapters. Reviewers generally consider anything in that area as fair game to be mentioned.

When I was writing this book, I didn't give my writing buddy any warning about what I had planned, and her reaction when she read the scene that revealed the information was priceless. I was hoping all the readers would be able to have that kind of delighted surprise, but I knew the odds were against it. Ah, well.

In other news, revisions went well yesterday and I made really good progress. Of course, I still have a couple of the bigger changes left to handle, but I'm cruising through the littler ones. Yea!

I talked to a woman at work about my poor flowers being sheared off and she thought it might be a cut worm. She recommended some powder stuff that won't hurt the plants or any animals, yet keeps the bugs away. I now have a bag of it and my dad volunteered to put it on for me this morning. Hopefully, the protection will save the rest of my flowers.

Miles To Go

Promo stuff. Sigh. I don't know why the deadlines for that kind of thing always seems to hit at the same time I've got writing deadlines. It seems like it happens for every book and then I'm trying to cram more hours into my day. Somehow.

Today's deadline is to get my bookmarks out to RT. They have a mailing service that hits 700 bookstores that care. This is much more cost efficient than mailing on my own. Did that on my first book and barely hit 125 stores at a lot higher cost in postage. My dad, thank goodness, is hauling the boxes to UPS for me and my mom did the counting out of the bookmarks. Another big thank goodness. But they'll be going out with the September issue rather than the August when the book is reviewed because I was late ordering the bookmarks, which meant my mom was late counting them out, which means they're late going to RT. :-) It might work out, though, since the September issue should be out at the beginning of August.

Speaking of RT, I expect the August ratings to be posted on their website this week. Since I'm a subscriber, I'll get to read the reviews right away, too. I thought about asking for an advance review on In the Midnight Hour for promotional purposes, but I didn't. You see, I've never asked for this before and all my other reviews have been good. I guess I was afraid if I asked, this would be the one time where it wasn't. I've never considered myself superstitious, but there's no point in tempting fate, right? Anyway, I'll be holding my breath this week (in a way) until the reviews go up. This book is one that I'm particularly excited about, and I'm hoping others love it, too.

Revision work continues. Progress was much slower yesterday, but I'm still plugging away.

Titles Are Hard

Revision work started out a little slow yesterday. I struggled with out to fix one of the problems, but once I got through that, I was able to power through a lot of chapters. Today, though, I hit the scenes requiring the most work, so it's going to be a long day.

Yesterday evening, I walked down to the tree ring to check on my flowers and something had ruined three more of my starfighter lilies! They appeared as if they'd been bitten through and a fourth had the leaf edges chewed off the top. Do rabbits do this? We have a lot of them around this area. I talked to my dad and I'm hoping he's going to put up some kind of wire fence to protect my beautiful flowers. If it's insects that did it, though, I guess I'm SOL. :-( I was not happy to see the destruction.

I managed to have an all day baseball extravaganza while I revised. I love having a game on, with the sound muted, while I'm writing. I was able to go from a noon game, to a 3pm game, to a 6pm game. I wish every day I write was like that. :-)

I also had a new character come in yesterday while I was revising. She did interfere with my revising, so I wasn't thrilled. I also wasn't thrilled because this puts me at like five projects now that I might/will tackle when I finish revisions and work on getting proposals together. I'm not sure if I'll do this new character's story, although it is intriguing. It's just a pretty bleak world she lives in and I was hearing her story in first person. Ugh! I hate first person.

Busy Week at the EDJ

I was originally going to share with you all a story from the Evil Day Job (EDJ) that involved maneuvering, manipulation and backstabbing, but I decided it would bore y'all senseless. I will tell you that it was like a soap opera at work all week long and that the entertainment value was relatively high since I wasn't involved in any of it. :-) Let's just say that Mister Congeniality was thwarted in his attempt to oust another tech writer from a position that MC wanted and leave it at that.

Another one of my tech writers, one that's funny and a good guy, took a position in another department. He's only going to be around two more weeks. It's a good opportunity for him, but I'm going to miss picking on him.

We cut over to a new computer system at the EDJ this past week and while part of it went smoothly, a big part of it is all hosed up. Of course, IS didn't listen to the people who were impacted and deleted the old database despite their protests. Since this is the part of the system I work in, this doesn't sound too good. Luckily for me, I won't see anything in this area until the big problems are worked out.

Work on revisions for my book continue. I was thinking the other day that producing a book is kind of like a miracle. One day, you have like 10 pages and then the next thing you know, there's a 420 page story. :-) And it actually makes sense. =8-O I'm amazed each and every time this happens.

Of Writing and Revisions

It's going to be a pedal to the metal weekend for me with revisions. I've been making the smaller changes, but the bigger ones--the ones that require thought--those I've been saving for when I'm more rested and can think more clearly.

Revisions are driving home for me how much I need a coffee table. I'm working on the couch with my laptop and I have papers to either side of me and I have to keep getting up to look at the piles I have on my table or to look up a synonym. I keep thinking, wow, if I had a coffee table, I could lay everything in front of me and I wouldn't have to keep jumping up and down or worry about my papers falling on the floor.

One of the things I started doing on the last two books was print out a calendar and write down which chapters happen on which day. I've discovered I really like this because then I don't need to worry about keeping the timeline straight or rereading to find out how many days have passed. I just consult my handy dandy calendar and the info is all there.

In the Midnight Hour was the first book I did this on and it's because the book starts on the spring equinox and the full moon plays a huge role so I needed to make sure my timing matched perfectly. I liked this method so well, I did it again for In Twilight's Shadow, my 2008 book.

Another new idea I picked up--and I wish I'd heard about it sooner--is a name chart. It's to help you make sure all your characters don't have names starting with the letter J or whatever. It's just a one sheet thing with all the letters of the alphabet listed, and when you mention a new name, you write it down. I think this will work really well for the magical creatures I use in my books as well as the names of the people in the book.

In other news, my friend, the grass-carrying wasp, has tried to build a nest in the same window every single day. I keep opening it up wide when I get home and the wind has blown her nest away, but she doesn't give up.

And two flowers in my porch planters are dead. The plant assassin strikes again.

This and That

I'm really late posting today. Sorry about that!

I'm having a book video trailer made for In the Midnight Hour and it's really turned out cool! It's not finished yet, but I think we're close. Right now, we're going through, trying to find pictures that fit my h/h and the villain. I wish we could use the pictures I had up as I wrote, but unfortunately, I don't have the rights to them. I think we found Ryne, but we're still searching for Deke and Anise.

My plants weren't quite as decimated as I thought. Last night, I took a break from revisions and went down to really check things out closely. I only lost 1 starfighter lily and it looks as if I only lost 1 toad lily. I really thought I'd lost all but 1 toad lily. The Sumatra lilies, however, were as bad as I thought--three gone out of four. The one remaining one is doing really well, so that's some consolation. Peony tree is doing excellent!

I finally finished the prologue for Midnight Hour and revisions are starting to pick up speed now. Of course, they couldn't go much slower than they were while I was writing the new pages.

I think I'll stop here. I'm writing this at the EDJ. :-(