Tag: revisions

Writing–Revising Spirited In Spite

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

My goal this month was to revise Spirited In Spite and submit it to a novel contest. I knew that I had a lot of obstacles to overcome in the goal. I started doing the work in December during the holidays and nothing kills my productivity like running the Holiday Gauntlet. I knew I was going to Chicago for a birthday weekend at Cubs Con, which meant getting any work done would be pretty special. I saw those challenges and was willing to face them head on in the name of getting this manuscript entered into the contest.

However, what I didn’t count on was my bad memory and ability to underestimate things.

See, I had notes written up for the revisions/rewrites of Spirited In Spite. It’s how I do my manuscript revisions. I read through it and make notes. Looking at the notes, I thought I had more to work with than what was actually there. In other words, there was a lot more rewriting than revision required. Shortly before I left for Chicago, I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to make the deadline. There was just too much work to be done and not enough time to do it, particularly to the satisfaction of entering it into a contest.

I’m continuing with the rewrites, of course, and I’m hoping to finish them this month. I shouldn’t have any more interruptions for the rest of the month and if I can write 60,000 words in 3 weeks, I shouldn’t have any trouble finishing this rewrite before the 31st. I do have notes, after all.

In a sense, I’m really writing a new first draft when doing these rewrites because so much of the manuscript is being rewritten. In fact, I’d say at least 75 to 80% . And when it comes to writing a first draft, I just write as fast as I can and don’t look back.

I’m disappointed that I didn’t realize sooner that revising this manuscript for a contest would be a lost cause. A Tale of Two Lady Killers was probably in better shape to be done and I might have actually made the deadline with something worth submitting. But these are the kinds of mistakes that I tend to make. I get an idea in my head, think I know what I’m doing, and then too late realize that I’m clueless or that I missed a much better option due to tunnel vision. It’s something I really do need to work on.

But, at least at the end of this whole mess I’ll be one more step closer to having a legitimate finished manuscript on my hands to do with as I will.

There’s always another contest.

Writing–January Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

January is going to be one busy, crazy month.

I’m rewriting/revising Spirited in Spite for a contest. The deadline is February 5th, but I’m going to try to have the novel done by January 30th. Yeah, considering most of the book has to be rewritten, there is no way this can end well. If I can get it in somewhat readable shape, I’ll be happy.

The contest is in three stages: pitch, excerpt, novel. I will declare this contest a success if I can get past the pitch stage.

Really, since there’s no entry fee, there’s nothing I’ve got to lose by doing this. The hard deadline, the goal, will help keep me focused. I’ve rewritten/revised one other novel, but I didn’t complete it in the sense that I would feel comfortable with sending it. I can’t imagine I can get this book perfect in about 30 days (okay, to be fair it’s more like 45 days since I actually started working on it in December), but what I will end up with when I submit my entry is going to be better and closer to finished than what I’ve got right now. There’s no reason for me to pass up the opportunity to really work on my novel revising skills in a specific time frame and with a definite goal.

There will be stress and frustration. Let’s just hope that it’s not so severe I end up pulling out my hair.

I’ve also got a few short stories that need to be finished from December. “Another Deadly Weapon” is done and ready to go. “How the Night Haunts” will be up on the blog shortly. The rewrites on “At 3:36” ended up separating the piece into two different stories, “At 3:36” and “Powerless”. “At 3:36” needs more work, but “Powerless” just needs some polishing up, I think. “Anniversaries” and the untitled short story need more work, too.

Aside from “Powerless”, every other story is going to wait in favor of the novel revisions. With “Powerless” done, I’ll have four stories (along with “Soul Sister”, “Playing Chicken” (the anthology it was going to be in was canceled), and “Another Deadly Weapon”) to shop around, which I plan to do in earnest. My goal is to submit a lot more short stories this year.

Let’s see how this all works out with my birthday and me being in Chicago for four days. Let’s just see.

Writing–December Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

After spending a month (okay, it was more like three weeks) with a novel, December is short story month.

I have three new ones I’m looking to write. “How the Night Haunts” will be a freebie for a the blog. “Anniversaries” and an as yet untitled one have no definite intention yet, but I imagine I’ll be trying to submit them whenever I deem them ready.

I also have three old ones that are in need of revisions. I need to rewrite “At 3:36” with the new angle and fix the ending of “Another Deadly Weapon” because I’ve never liked it. And then there’s “An Active Sleeper”, which needs something, but I’m don’t know what yet. All I know is I don’t think I’m achieving the affect I want. I’m guessing that one is going to be the big struggle of the month.

All of that, plus working on getting Rejected on Kindle should keep me plenty busy this month.

Writing–The Nightmare of “At 3:36”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Last week I wrote about how some stories seem to come to me as if by magic. That first draft comes so easily and requires very little revision to create a final project.

And then there are stories that are the bane of my very existence, the ones that I struggle with and can never seem to get them right no matter how much I mess with them.

All of my stories get revised. Whenever one of my short stories gets rejected, I always review it to see if there’s anything I can do to make it better. I admit that some stories get more than a little tweak after a rejection. Both “Erin Go Bragh” and “Elevator” (both published in my Rejection book) ended up getting significant rewrites more than once after being rejected. “Such a Pretty Face” required some serious work to get right.

But “At 3:36” is a story of a different beast.

It started off simply enough. I got an image of a scene in my  head, a woman looking out the window, watching as the world stops spinning for forty-five minutes at the same time over several days. I wrote it out, explored that scene, and came up with the first draft. The sticking point was that I didn’t want to explain why the world was stopping. It was just happening and the point of the story wasn’t that the world kept stopping and needed to be fixed (this isn’t a SyFy movie, after all), but how my main character reacted and dealt with this event.

But I couldn’t get it right.

No matter how I cut the story or rewrote it or change it (keeping two basic things intact: the world stopping its spin and the main character’s reaction to it), I couldn’t get the story to work. I couldn’t get it to feel right.

I go a lot by how a story feels. If I feel like I’ve told the story I want to tell and created the effect I wanted to create, then I’m satisfied and I can work on polishing and revising that story to make it the best it can be. I never got to that point with “At 3:36” and it was pretty disappointing.

The other day I was in the shower, letting my mind wonder over things I needed to work on, stories that needed to be told, money that needed to be made, the typical things that run rampant in my brain during my morning showers. It was during these mental gymnastics that the possible solution to my “At 3:36” story woes came to me. I think I’ve finally figured out how to fix this story once and for all.

I won’t know for sure until I actually do it, which won’t be until December due to Nanowrimo, but for the first time, I’m excited about this story.

Considering that I hated it as soon as I was done with the first draft, that’s a big improvement.

Writing–October Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

It’s getting into my writing busy season.

NaNoWriMo is coming up, which means I’ve got to start planning for it. The loose idea I’m kicking around right now is another Stanley novel called American Vampires. It would involve Stanley, Neda, and Nathan hunting down a trio of, well, American vampires that may or may not exist and may or may not be living by the unwritten vampire code (it’s all hearsay and Nathan’s the one doing most of the hearing and saying and since Stanley doesn’t trust Nathan, well…).

I’m also going to continue revising The World (Saving) Series. I finally got chapter one done after starting over. It’s still not great, but it’s a lot closer to what it needs to be and it’s good enough that I can move on.

Also on tap is more work on The Outskirts site. I need to, at the very least, get some bios up on some of the characters that inhabit the universe and try scratching out some ideas on some of their stories. I’m not expecting miracles when it comes to getting anything accomplished, but I need to get something done. It can’t just sit there.

And lastly (told you it was my busy season), I’ve got an idea for a memoir and I’m going to start jotting down some ideas for it. I have no idea if I’ll even write it, but it’s not going to hurt anything if I do some brainstorming on it. Who knows? If I decide not to do it, I’ll at least have something to come back to if I change my mind.

So, those are the writing projects on tap for October. I’ve got to get my butt out of low gear and into high.

Writing–September Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’ve only got two main things going on this month.

First, I need to get the book of short stories, hereby titled Rejected: Nine Stories I Couldn’t Get Published, published. I’ve already started with the formatting bit of the process and I hope to have it all said and done by the end of the week.

Next week, I’ll go into more detail about both the project and the process.

Second, (and you should know this by heart now) I’ve GOT to get The World (Saving) Series revised. I know I acknowledged a setback with the revisions last month (namely having to go back to the beginning because I missed a few key scenes), but haven’t made much progress since. I think I thought about opening it up and looking at it a couple of times, but that’s about as far as I made it. No excuses, but I do have plenty of explanations (full blame on me) if anyone is interested in hearing them.

Yeah, I thought not.

Writing–August Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

You remember how I said that when revising long projects that I liked to go through the whole thing in one go and not go back until I was finished and how I was feeling the urge with The World (Saving) Series because it was taking me so long to finish?

Yeah, well, in starting Chapter 12 revisions, I realized there’s a couple of big scenes that are missing and if I’m going to get this chapter to work, I have to go back and work them into the previous chapters.

In short, Karma dropkicked me right in the butt.

So August will be spent doing revisions/rewrites on stuff I’ve already revised/rewritten in the hopes that I can move forward.

The likelihood of me being done with these revisions by the time NaNoWriMo rolls around just keeps getting slimmer and slimmer.

I’m not very good at this balancing act.

Writing–Conquering Chapter 11

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

It is with great relief that I can announce that I finally finished the revisions on chapter 11 of The World (Saving) Series. This would hardly be worth note if I hadn’t been stuck on it for two months (or longer).

It’s a small (very small) victory of sorts. It’s progress where there hasn’t been any for a while. It’s a small step back on the right track.

It makes me feel like a writer again, something I haven’t been feeling very much like lately. With the stress of the day job eating up my energy, and my committment to blogging both here and at Two Foulweather Fans, it feels I don’t have enough brain cells and minutes left to be creative. The writer’s doubt really settled in.

Finally getting through chapter 11 (as rough as it still is, the necessary story changes have been made and that was my main goal) relieved a little of that doubt and reminded me that I am a writer and that I can do this. It reminded me that I WANT to do this. That I want to put myself in the position to write full-time again and the only way I can do that is by writing part-time now and getting this book done.

I’m not saying that this book will make me a millionaire (wouldn’t that be nice), but I do know that I can’t even begin to sell it if it isn’t finished.

And I’m determined to get it finished.

Chapter 11 done. Bring on chapter 12.

Writing–The Other Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

The World (Saving) Series isn’t my only novel project I’ve got in existence. Due to some successful go rounds at NaNoWriMo as well as a pretty productive period during a six month period one year, I’ve actually got a few in various stages.

When I wrote the first one, now titled Spirited in Spite, I didn’t realize that I was creating a universe. It wasn’t until I wrote (and then lost in the Great Crash) A Simple Matter of Mind Control that I was on to something. By the time I finished the first draft of A Tale of Two Lady Killers, the concept of this universe solidified itself. It wasn’t until The World (Saving) Series that I gave this universe a name, The ‘Skirts, and decided all of the pieces fit. All of the main characters are “on the outskirts of normal”, as one of the characters explains. They all have some sort of paranormal attribute. To me it makes sense and I hope I can make it work.

As I mentioned, they’re all in various stages. Spirited in Spite is waiting to be rewritten (I’ve already done a few chapters and made notes on the rest). A Simple Matter of Mind Control, first draft lost to the Great Crash, is outlined and waiting to be written again, the changes I was planning to make already incoporated into the new outline. A Tale of Two Lady Killers has already had one round of revisions/rewrites.

And we all know where The World (Saving) Series is.

I’m hoping…no, intending…to get back to all of these projects and make something readable out of them. I think they all hold the potential to be good stories and I want to see them through to the end.

Not only would I like to get these stories told, but they also provide me with the opportunity to get into the habit of finishing things.

But that’s another blog post for another day.

Writing–Revising the Long Ones

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

Through the power of NaNoWriMo, I’ve written a few novels. First drafts are always the hardest for me and NaNo is a great way for me to get that big idea out of my head and onto paper. However, I’ve only made it through one round of revisions on a couple of them before something else took their place on the priority list.

I keep the first round of revisions simple. I read through the manuscript and make notes on story elements that I want to change. Then I go back and make the changes. Depending on how bad the first draft is (usually pretty bad), I may end up rewriting a big portion of the novel. At the very least, a few chapters are guaranteed to be rewritten. It’s all part of the process.

And it’s a long process, but in the past I’ve been really good at sitting down and getting it done. Sometimes ideas occur to me during the revision process, but unless it immediately pertains to continuity, I rarely go back and change anything. I just note it for the next round (which I’ve never gotten to, but I still intend to get ther at some point).

However, I’ve run into something interesting with revising The World (Saving) Series. Because it’s taking me so long to revise it, the temptation to go back to the beginning with my new ideas and start on the second round of revisions.

I’m resisting this because I think it will work better for me to go through the whole manuscript and make these changes first. I’m sticking with the method that has worked before, basically. I don’t want to start the trend of going back and revising what I’ve already revised before I’m done revising or I’ll never be done revising, you know?

I envy the people that can revise as they go or stick with one chapter until it’s perfect and then move on to the next. If I did that, I’d never be done. Or I’d always be going back. My best bet is to keep chugging through one round after another to ensure that I finish the round.

It’s the slower option, but I think that right now, it’s the one that suits me best.

In this one case, I’ve got to resist temptation.