A Break for the Break

Since next week is the March Break for my kids, I'm going to take some of the advice I've been reading over the last week or so and make time for some fun!

Although I'm sure I'll still be writing (and hopefully more focused writing), I'm going to be taking a blog break in order to spend more time with my family and to get ready for spring. Spring's coming, right?

See you back on the blog on Monday, March 18th!

Revision Tip: Take a Holiday!

Today's Tip:

One of the most commonly repeated pieces of advice for revising is to take some time between writing your draft and working on revisions.

What I usually do is set a story aside for a couple of months while I write the first draft of another project (because there are always more stories waiting for me to write). I don't like to rush. Revisions require incubating time as well as writing time.

Useful link:  Jessica over at Bookends Literary Agency gives an agent's perspective on taking time for revisions.

Happy Holidays! This is my last revision tip for the month -- I'll be back in January (well-rested and with a good chunk of my novel revision done).

Stop Writing To Think

This probably sounds crazy, but I sometimes feel so caught up in the need to use any spare moment for writing that I forget to take time to think. As I move along with rephrasing, adding emotions, or enriching descriptions, I'm thinking, but not deeply enough.

It's usually a comment by a critique buddy that makes me stop and really consider one of the elements I've put into my story. Does it need to be there? Why did I put that there? How can I make it work? Lately, I've been stopping a lot, even for elements that seem to be working, to think, 'What if...'

And it's been exciting. Even when I thought I had my story all worked out, thinking about what might happen if one element was a little different has led me to changes that increase tension, deepen character motivation and streamline the plot.

Do you ever ask "what if" when you're revising?

Catching Up on Writing and Reading

I'm slowly emerging from summer fun mode and getting back to a routine, including writing, critiquing, and blogging. Sometimes I worry that taking a break from it will take my mind too far away and I'll lose some of my "writing magic". Never happens. Even though it make take a day or two to get back into it, writing is a big part of who I am, and it always comes back.

During my break, I did some serious thinking about "behind the scenes" elements of my latest novel. Thinking that I wouldn't have been doing if I'd just kept on with my writing schedule. My notebook is full of questions and scribbled comments on topics ranging from the politics of the place where my characters live to small details about my character's personalities. It's made me more excited than ever about my novel revisions, even though I have a lot of sorting out to do!

The one thing I didn't make much progress on was my 100 book challenge, though I did read Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins this week. I'll need to read it again to absorb it properly. Because I was looking forward to it all summer, there were some elements I found disappointing. But I think that when you're hyped up about reading something, there's often a bit of let down. I felt the same way about This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer, but after I re-read it, I appreciated it more. Mockingjay contained surprises, good writing, and interesting new characters. It definitely needs a second read that isn't coloured by my expectations.

Pause/Stop: Time to Think

I’ve made it to Chapter 18 of my current work-in-progress, and I feel like I might actually accomplish my goal of finishing the first draft by the end of June. Now that I’m coming into the last third of the book, I’m excited to see how it’s going to end.

Yikes – did I just say that? I should already know how it will end, after all the outlining I did before I started. Except that since then, my characters have taken over the story in ways I didn’t expect. The specifics of the ending are changing. Yesterday, instead of writing, I did a lot of thinking about what’s going to come next. What I noticed:

1) Now that I know my characters better (and which minor characters have developed a stronger role), I have a better sense of what they’d do in a given situation.

2) I discovered some details that I need to weave in and/or bring out earlier in the story. Like in the part I’m writing now.

3) Some of the questions I had at the beginning of the story are starting to get answered, and some still need to be answered, but at least I know which ones.

4) Taking a mini thinking break gives me an energy boost.