Category: Revising

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Pitch Wars Contestant Alert!

So as you might be wondering… I am STILL working on my directed revision from the end of June and have not sent another query letter or anything. In fact, I contacted the agents who still had my MS and asked if they would hold off on reading it until I got them a newer draft. They were all absolutely gracious and agreed. That’s how much I believed that I needed a huge overhaul on my book.

You might guess that due to the lack of progress, I was what you might call – STUCK! I was overwhelmed and not really sure how to get where I wanted my book to be.

I’ve been watching Brenda Drake’s Pitch Wars contest for the last few years, but never was at a place where I could enter. This year, when submission time came around, I decided to give it a shot. Getting a chance to have my novel edited by a professional YA writer would be a dream come true. So I entered and lo and behold, Trisha Leigh picked me as an alternate!

I’m so ridiculously excited to begin working on my SIX PAGE edit letter and a MS full of line edits! Eeks! I have such a renewed vision for this book and it felt soooo good to get picked out of so many people (over 1200 submissions) and have someone who loved my book! yay!

Girls wanna have fun

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My summer lull…

60c472a8d805ddef81428d747fde3d6dWhat started out as what I thought was a pretty simple revision has joined forces with the fact that it’s summer and I only have a sitter two days a week, along with the fact that I work from home and actually have – you know – paid work to do and then mix in the fact that this SIMPLE revision has turned into something not so simple at all… here I stand.

a little over halfway through a huge revision/re-write since the end of June and just now starting to pick up the pace!

As much as I’ve enjoyed hanging out with my littles all day, I’m quite ready for the rhythm that school will bring. Although I really thought I would be done by now, I’ve had a pretty awesome summer, so I can’t complain.

Hope yours was awesome as well!

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Revising and Re-Writing

I’ve taken a lengthy break from writing… part of it was self-imposed distance that I felt like I needed for perspective… another huge part was I just moved back from Europe and that was a bit ca-razy.

But now that I’m reading back over what I wrote, I’m realizing that the first few chapters are just crap. I like the way the book evolves, but especially that first chapter just needs a hell of a lot of work!

I found some great resources for revising. One is this cool article on the NaNoWriMo blog called 7 Steps to a Big Picture Revision. The other is Second Sight by Cheryl B. Klein.

It’s a little overwhelming, especially since I’m not really sure exactly how to get that first chapter where I want it to be… but I guess that is part of the journey I am on.

So here’s to re-writing

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…. and happy re-revising to me!

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Ptsss… hey!

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Worst blogger ever checking in!

Finished my first big revision and starting on revision number two after I get this next freelance project finished… kids are in school, which is kind of pretty awesome for having a bit more time to write, but I’m also back in language school so that’s a bit less time to write… oh and my brain gets all foggy and heavy from all the thinking.

Regardless, ALLIANCE is coming together… slowly but surely! I’m still not to the point of whether I think this first foray into becoming a writer is good enough to even attempt to get published, but we’ll see!

I’m having fun and learning and that is what this is all about. Oh and world domination.

Okay, back to work…

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