And you thought condensing your book into a one-page query letter was hard.
Colleen Lindsay is holding a haiku query contest over on her blog, The Swivet.
Here's my entry:
Teen girl loves cursed boy
Impossible, his touch kills
Cult wants his power
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
By Renni Browne and Dave King Buy this book, if you are a writer that is. I finally bought it after repeatedly seeing it recommended on writing and publishing blogs, so I thought I'd add my recommendation, too. Even though I've heard much of the included information before, I still found it extremely helpful. The examples are great, the explanations clear, and I especially liked their chapter on Show and Tell. The checklists at the end of each chapter are also great tools.
Update
I really don't update this blog often enough.
WIP current total word count - 55,029
Final Sven word count - 44,410
So, I didn't reach my Sven goal of 60,000 words or finish either of the WIPs I'd hoped to complete during the 70 days of sweat, but that's okay because I'm really happy with the progress I did make and I know it won't take me long to get the last bits done on both of those first drafts once I get back to working on them.
So what have I been doing instead? Revising, revising, revising and more revising. On a novel I thought was finished and perfect last summer. But after entering my first page in Miss Snark's First Victim's Secret Agent contest last November, I decided to make a few revisions to the beginning, which then required some revisions throughout the rest of the first chapter, which then led to more revisions and...you get the idea. I'd been planning to put off working on this until after I finished the first drafts of my other WIPs, but after entering another Secret Agent contest and getting more feedback, I started making changes and I've been stuck in Revisionland ever since. This is a good thing though. The book is stronger, and it really does help to have had some distance from it. Although I've rewritten the first page somewhere around oh, 10,000 times by now, and I'm still not completely happy with it. I missed getting into the latest Secret Agent round because I was still fiddling with it by the time the submissions filled up, so I may just post it here in case anyone is interested.
WIP current total word count - 55,029
Final Sven word count - 44,410
So, I didn't reach my Sven goal of 60,000 words or finish either of the WIPs I'd hoped to complete during the 70 days of sweat, but that's okay because I'm really happy with the progress I did make and I know it won't take me long to get the last bits done on both of those first drafts once I get back to working on them.
So what have I been doing instead? Revising, revising, revising and more revising. On a novel I thought was finished and perfect last summer. But after entering my first page in Miss Snark's First Victim's Secret Agent contest last November, I decided to make a few revisions to the beginning, which then required some revisions throughout the rest of the first chapter, which then led to more revisions and...you get the idea. I'd been planning to put off working on this until after I finished the first drafts of my other WIPs, but after entering another Secret Agent contest and getting more feedback, I started making changes and I've been stuck in Revisionland ever since. This is a good thing though. The book is stronger, and it really does help to have had some distance from it. Although I've rewritten the first page somewhere around oh, 10,000 times by now, and I'm still not completely happy with it. I missed getting into the latest Secret Agent round because I was still fiddling with it by the time the submissions filled up, so I may just post it here in case anyone is interested.
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