Monday, October 5, 2009


As usual time is flying by.  October, really?  I've set this month down for getting back to work, aka editing.  I was sitting in my car today, in the public library parking lot, reading an overdue book.  I was trying to get as much of it read as I could and drop it in the overnight bin, before the library opened, increasing the amount I owed.  I got halfway through, sorta sad really when you consider I hadn't managed to read any of it in the three weeks (or was it 6?) that I had it at home.  The reason for my mentioning it at all is, it was James N Frey's, How to Write a Damn Good Novel 2.  And I understood it, and it made sense to me, and I actually felt inspired (to fix my mistakes, and develop new skills). Which is quite a feat as nothing else I have read, in trying to learn how to edit, has done that.  I think I actually understand the why and how of my lacking suspense, and I feel like I may be able to create it, or at least now I know how to try to.  So to me, internally, sitting in a library parking lot today, was a great big deal.  The rusty cobwebbed cogs are turning!  Go gears go.  The whimsical me is all set to go dreaming again.  And the worker to forge a path by hacking away the underbrush and overgrowth.  October, what I need during thee is to believe.

4 comments:

strugglingwriter said...

Inspired is good :)

Love the photograph.

Also, November is NaNoWriMo :)

Taffiny said...

Paul,

:) inspired is so good, much much better then downtrodden and disheartened.

Thanks I didn't take it; I did however harass my husband into taking it. He kept saying it wouldn't work, the moon, the scale, yada yada. I kept saying, yes it will, just make sure you get the tree near the moon, so it is almost peeking out from it. I did have to crop it though, clearly he wasn't feeling the scene the same way I was. (which actually I like, different artistic types, different ways of seeing.)

NaNoWriMo, oh no! :) Well, I am making October about editing Echo, with the intention of making November a fly by the seat of my pants try at writing Fountain of Swans, during NaNoWriMo (which I failed to do last year, even failed at the trying to do it part. I was however very good at the thinking about trying to do it part). Doing it for NaNo means I wont have my research in line, but I think it would bebetter to just plow through and get some work done on it story wise, and then go back in and expand it with more knowledge. I think this because trying to do it the other way for this pat year, has resulted in my doing, basically nothing.

How about you?

strugglingwriter said...

I've been talked into NaNoWriMo again, but I'm not gonna beat myself up if I don't get to 50,000.

Taffiny said...

Paul,

yeah that is what I am thinking. If I do it, I will be doing it for a nice push forward, you know the energy and momentum, that comes with NaNo that can really help you reach for something. But, I am not going to make myself crazy, or stay up into the wee hours, and miss out on family time because of it. I am going to make a plan, and I am going to work. However far I get is as far as I get, just as long as I am consistently working toward it, then it's all good.