The idea of this blog post comes from a paragraph in a friend's wip, where one character is questioned about whether they are chasing their dream. It struck me in the heart. I bluntly replied 'no, I haven't been'.
I haven't been chasing my dream lately. Yes, I've been busy in life. But, I've also been a little lazy to some extent. I've been focusing on others' work. This is important - creating links and forging bonds with fellow writers really helps when the time comes for critiquing of a novel. But, sometimes the focus comes away from the dream.
I'm hoping the dream here is obvious! To get to the stage where I feel my work is acceptable for submitting to agents.
By acceptable, I mean as polished as I can possibly get it with the help of critiques. To the best writing I can achieve without help from an agent and editor.
I'm hoping that this can be November/December this year for Termion. Which means I've got a lot of work ahead. I plan on finishing Imperial Intrigue (draft 1), then revising Termion. I'm on chapter 5 now. I average around 30-35 chapters per novel at the moment, so just another 30 odd to go! I can do this, and I must write every day. I can write 1 chapter a day....its very doable in first draft stage, so that's what I'm aiming for. At the least, I'll be writing 500 words a day (see earlier post).
So, are you chasing the dream?
Showing posts with label words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label words. Show all posts
Friday, 6 March 2009
Friday, 20 February 2009
Do you know what you're writing?
No, I haven't lost the plot. Do you honestly know what you're writing?
For Imperial Intrigue, (and also Misty Chaos), since they have been written once or twice already, I'm writing the revision in a new way.
Write a chapter, thinking about what I write. Then go back and edit.
Now, my editing is this. Reading the paragraph to see if its how I roughly want it to be. Then I'm actually checking the meaning behind the words I'm using, with a humungous dictionary and thesaurus (2 separate entities, Oxford type). Turns out what I think a word means, isn't necessarily its exact meaning. So I head off to the thesaurus, check out similar words, cross reference their meaning....and I come up with a sentence which i'm happy with.
It's slow, and I think it'll speed up as I get used to using words properly. It's not something I can do with true first drafts. It would really muck up my muse.
For Imperial Intrigue, (and also Misty Chaos), since they have been written once or twice already, I'm writing the revision in a new way.
Write a chapter, thinking about what I write. Then go back and edit.
Now, my editing is this. Reading the paragraph to see if its how I roughly want it to be. Then I'm actually checking the meaning behind the words I'm using, with a humungous dictionary and thesaurus (2 separate entities, Oxford type). Turns out what I think a word means, isn't necessarily its exact meaning. So I head off to the thesaurus, check out similar words, cross reference their meaning....and I come up with a sentence which i'm happy with.
It's slow, and I think it'll speed up as I get used to using words properly. It's not something I can do with true first drafts. It would really muck up my muse.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
