Writerly Update
Sep. 9th, 2012 08:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blairmacgIt's an awesome morning--55 degrees, the sky striped with clouds, the crickets still chirping. The dogs are overjoyed. It's been a long time since running circles around the house was exhilarating rather than heat-exhausting.
The weather reminds me of mornings at Viable Paradise. Truly, I think I've entered the season when everything will remind me of Viable Paradise. Cool mornings? VP. Rain? VP. Documentary about Italian crime families? VP. Ukes, whiskey, and kale? Yep, VP. Not for the first time, I wish Martha's Vineyard was on the way to some feasible destination that permitted me to just drop in during that week October.
I'm not saying I want to go through the workshop experience again right now. Much of what I learned is just now settling into place. Workshopping again will just keep it all stirred up in my forethoughts. It needs to become an intrinsic part of the process instead. But I'd love to just hang out!
The pieces of Chant's sequel, Surrender Past, is coming together in bits and pieces. Until Chant, I was solely a seat-of-my-pants writer. Chant was the first novel I wrote from an extremely detailed outline. Looks like I'll be writing Past the same way. I wonder if that's a byproduct of the omni POV, needing to see the whole picture before setting out.
Now, as I shift over to the revisions for Sand and Bone, I'm looking forward to making progress. I'd reached the point of revising in response to rejections so much, that I stripped out the sense of immediacy and and excitement. I'm done with that. No version of the novel got a better response than the first "final" version. Trouble was, I didn't really know how to fix the problems, so ended up exacerbating the faults instead. I forgot it's a story, not a collection of writing techniques.
The weather reminds me of mornings at Viable Paradise. Truly, I think I've entered the season when everything will remind me of Viable Paradise. Cool mornings? VP. Rain? VP. Documentary about Italian crime families? VP. Ukes, whiskey, and kale? Yep, VP. Not for the first time, I wish Martha's Vineyard was on the way to some feasible destination that permitted me to just drop in during that week October.
I'm not saying I want to go through the workshop experience again right now. Much of what I learned is just now settling into place. Workshopping again will just keep it all stirred up in my forethoughts. It needs to become an intrinsic part of the process instead. But I'd love to just hang out!
The pieces of Chant's sequel, Surrender Past, is coming together in bits and pieces. Until Chant, I was solely a seat-of-my-pants writer. Chant was the first novel I wrote from an extremely detailed outline. Looks like I'll be writing Past the same way. I wonder if that's a byproduct of the omni POV, needing to see the whole picture before setting out.
Now, as I shift over to the revisions for Sand and Bone, I'm looking forward to making progress. I'd reached the point of revising in response to rejections so much, that I stripped out the sense of immediacy and and excitement. I'm done with that. No version of the novel got a better response than the first "final" version. Trouble was, I didn't really know how to fix the problems, so ended up exacerbating the faults instead. I forgot it's a story, not a collection of writing techniques.
