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Editing Made Easier
First, it’s been WAY TOO LONG since I last wrote a blog post. One of my goals for 2017 is to remedy that. I’m shooting for one post a month. The themes will be similar to years’ past: writing, romance, and self-care of writers. Here goes. Let’s start with editing. While I wouldn’t say I’m a slow writer, I definitely fear that I’m a slow editor. One of my goals is to get faster at writing and editing my novels. The first book I edited, Kissed at Midnight, went through multiple drafts. I wanted to take a big picture approach: developmental edits first, then line edits, then proofreading. And, while…
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Character Brains
In both plotting and revising, one of the issues I keep coming up against is the difficulty of setting up major conflicts in my stories. Difficult, but fun. Maybe it gets easier? Gulp. Sometimes I’ll step back from writing a section and scratch my head, wondering if I’ve made a character too smart or too oblivious. There’s a dread that we’ll let a major character be Too Stupid To Live (TSTL). Heroines are the ones typically labelled that way, but it can apply to heroes as well. (I’d argue that any hero who can’t see that his feelings are just feelings and not the end of the world, could be…
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Writing Cave
It’s Friday, the sun is shining, there’s no rain in the forecast. It’s gorgeous out there, but all I want to do is hole up and write. I could maybe take my laptop and headphones and write outside… But none of that can happen until tonight, well past sundown. Spring with its sports, holidays, and even a family wedding thrown in this year, has been incredibly hectic. I’m scrambling just to keep up with my dayjob. Tonight is a school carnival. Usually it is tons of fun, but I’m wishing it was another night because I’m DYING TO WRITE. Okay, not quite dying, but I’ve got a headache that won’t…