What's On Your Mind About Your Writing?

Made a note in the current WIP to just go ahead and include an Important Historical Plot Point. Asked myself for the rest of the day is it necessary? does it beat the reader/MCs over the head too much? would it be easy to remove in edits, if necessary? These questions and many others will be ignored...

Finally got my first review on Amazon About time, after 24 sales

Ravioli said:

Finally got my first review on Amazon About time, after 24 sales

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Congratulations!

It's not about my writing, but generally I wonder how many re-writes my favorite books have been through. I used to think they came out finished on the first or second try X-D Now that I've written a couple of books myself, I know that this is inexcusably naive....

I didn't have a paper copy of one of my first published novels. It went out of print about 10 years ago (I forgot to save a contributor's copy). I went through 3rd party sellers to pick up a used copy, via Amazon. They finally found one and it arrived yesterday. Very strange---It was brand new in bubble wrap, and when I opened it up I see my autograph on the title page, made out to a "Jamie." I have no idea who that person was or when I signed it. It kind of gave me the creeps. OTH, I now have hard and paper copies of all my books, save one. I just wanted a physical record of everything I've done. Not that my family or relatives are going to say, "Oh, look what he did!" It'll be more like, "Ah, look what he didn't do."

Aphotic Ink said:

SophK, for what it's worth, I never wrote anything in present tense for years and didn't particularly care for reading it--and after a couple of years, I've found it can feel pretty natural.

Your story is chattering to you; you'll be fine. Worst and slowest case, you can write it in past tense and then give it an editing pass. You've got this.

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Thanks Aphotic I agree, when the piece is talking loudly, you have to just do as it says!

After a slow start the short is actually going OK and I'm beginning to enjoy myself, which is the important thing with a first draft. Though I do wonder how much slipping-back-into-past-tense I'm going to see when I get to editing it. But so far this is an excellent exercise in trying new things and I'm glad I persevered. Now to make sure I finish it this weekend...

Currently outlining, and debating whether I want to reorder some of the books in the Elsabeth Soesten series. Book 2's ending is being rewritten, and may remove a character that receives an offhand mention in book 3. I can reuse that character in Book 4, and one of its minor subplots could actually work very nicely as foreshadowing a major plot point in book 3. So I COULD flip books 3 and 4. However book 5 logically follows book 4. Which means I'd have to move book 3 to book 5 instead. Book 3 hasn't been released yet, so I've got the leeway to do it. Just...blah.

Just got finished trading info back and forth with the publisher about the newest book sold. It involved, front matter, back matter, character profiles, dedication, acknowledgements, artwork, font, most strategic genre preference, price and a bunch of other stuff. My agent had it written into the contract where it gave me a bit more control over the book's content and appearance. This took all day, but I finally think I got it spot on, or as close as I can come to good on.

D. E. Wyatt said:

Currently outlining, and debating whether I want to reorder some of the books in the Elsabeth Soesten series. Book 2's ending is being rewritten, and may remove a character that receives an offhand mention in book 3. I can reuse that character in Book 4, and one of its minor subplots could actually work very nicely as foreshadowing a major plot point in book 3. So I COULD flip books 3 and 4. However book 5 logically follows book 4. Which means I'd have to move book 3 to book 5 instead. Book 3 hasn't been released yet, so I've got the leeway to do it. Just...blah.

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I'm always impressed by authors who can juggle a series like this. I don't think I could do the same.

starrystorm said:

I'm always impressed by authors who can juggle a series like this. I don't think I could do the same.

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This is even assuming I can get Book 4 (or 3) outlined. Right now I'm just not finding one that makes me happy. :-\

I know what you mean. When I was like 14, I wanted to write this huge fantasy series with like 12 different books in a series. I decided to plan them all at once and realized I didn't even need half of them to complete the series. Never got around to writing that series. Best of luck to you.

starrystorm said:

I know what you mean. When I was like 14, I wanted to write this huge fantasy series with like 12 different books in a series. I decided to plan them all at once and realized I didn't even need half of them to complete the series. Never got around to writing that series. Best of luck to you.

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Well, this is being written more like it was a television series, with each book being a self-contained "episode." There's continuity from one book to another, and there is something of a loose meta plot, but it's not like one big story. So that's part of what gives me the flexibility to do that.

I'm going through some depressive struggles at the moment, so I'm trying not to be too hard on myself when I don't do any writing.

That being said, I did get some done today. I'm not keeping track of how many words, though. That's one of the ways I'm trying not to be so hard on myself.

Anxiously waiting on a story submission. It got past the first cut and I would really really really like it to be accepted. Going on sixty-two days.

Hi, Ryan! And, good luck Taylor, I hope you hear good news soon.

I entered two poetry contests over the last few days, one for a chapbook and the other just for a couple of individual poems. Both contests have nice prizes; I won't hear a thing until sometime this summer, and will be very surprised if I win. Even if the chapbook contest doesn't yield anything, I will at least have a small poetry manuscript to do something with. Feels good.

Kylabelle said:

Hi, Ryan! And, good luck Taylor, I hope you hear good news soon.

I entered two poetry contests over the last few days, one for a chapbook and the other just for a couple of individual poems. Both contests have nice prizes; I won't hear a thing until sometime this summer, and will be very surprised if I win. Even if the chapbook contest doesn't yield anything, I will at least have a small poetry manuscript to do something with. Feels good.

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Thank you! I’m trying to stay focused on editing my novel and put it out of my mind, but it’s so hard.

I'm just glad I got back in here from the certificate expired notice. I panicked and thought this ship had sunk. I hit the advance button and then ignored the security warning. My Firefox got in the damn way.

Then my publisher sent me all versions of my book in all formats, and when I tried to open them and save them to individual files, I got the "Windows Cannot Open These Files" notice. Great. My Windows version is too old. The PDF settled in, and I'm now using it to give away free copies. Otherwise, I'll have to download an app that lets me convert EPUBS. Guh.

Kylabelle said:

Hi, Ryan! And, good luck Taylor, I hope you hear good news soon.

I entered two poetry contests over the last few days, one for a chapbook and the other just for a couple of individual poems. Both contests have nice prizes; I won't hear a thing until sometime this summer, and will be very surprised if I win. Even if the chapbook contest doesn't yield anything, I will at least have a small poetry manuscript to do something with. Feels good.

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Hi, Kyla! I hope you do well in the poetry contests.

I know I haven't been on here much. I'm going to try to be around more often.

Wondering whether I'll ever get back into the revision draft of the WIP when I can finally go back to it next week. I've had to distract myself with other things while waiting for feedback on certain chapters and have had my head turned by 'shiny new ideas'. I'm afraid I'll have completely lost the impulse, the connection with the world and story, and forgotten all the brainstorming I've been doing about the chapters I need to do next. Probably I'm just having a tired out 'waiting for the weekend' anxiety attack and being irrational. The plan to deal with this over the weekend is to tentatively plot out the beats for the chapters I need to write next, and hope that gets me back interested in what I'm supposed to be doing. I am both desperate to get this back up and running and sick of the sight of it. Go figure!

Oh man, well for starters, I'm not thinking about my writing as much as I should. Though when I am, it's mostly about how disastrous it looks right now. I'm doing developmental edits on my novel, and I can't tell if what I'm doing is helping the book or not. Though, I did just add another chapter at the beginning that helped a lot, so that's good, I guess. I'm going through it and making the changes I want, but it's slow going. Editing always is, I suppose. Though I need a fresh set of eyes on it, stat. Hopefully that can happen soon.

Good luck with your writing!

triceretops said:

I'm just glad I got back in here from the certificate expired notice. I panicked and thought this ship had sunk. I hit the advance button and then ignored the security warning..

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Same thing happened to me. I finally figured out how to get in, as you described.

lejay said:

Same thing happened to me. I finally figured out how to get in, as you described.

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Switching to Firefox worked for me.

Just recouping from sending dozens of PFF review copies out to all the Romance Reviewers out there. My publisher also socked it to the big ones. Dear gawd, some of their forms you have to fill out take an hour to complete. It is all so tedious. And the chances are stacked against you since they are receiving dozens or hundreds of requests per week. I did start early, but I know there will still be a hellacious lag time if anything is acknowledged or reviewed. My freebies got eaten up on FB, which pleased me to no end. Twitter was a failure in this regard. That surprised me, since I'd heard that Twitter trumped FB as far as book interest and sales.

triceretops said:

I'm just glad I got back in here from the certificate expired notice. I panicked and thought this ship had sunk. I hit the advance button and then ignored the security warning. My Firefox got in the damn way.

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Same here, and I see others having the same issue. Neither FF nor Pale Moon will let me in without making AW an exception. Something wrong here.

WriteMinded said:

Same here, and I see others having the same issue. Neither FF nor Pale Moon will let me in without making AW an exception. Something wrong here.

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See this thread for what's going on.