Comments (1)

By Leslie, June 12, 2010 2:39 pm

Shiny

A Fault in Time is getting very shiny. The real question is…

Am I polishing a fabulous, vintage 1964 Airstream Globetrotter trailer or a turd?

OK, to be fair it’s not an either/or question. It could be something in between. It could have a plot that is close and needs tweaking, or a great plot but be light on characterization. Or it could have great voice and lack detail, or….

“Last boarding call for the spiral staircase of doom to Obessoland.”

Yes, well. Harrumph.

The first set of beta readers get their mitts on it Sunday. Oh shit, that’s tomorrow. I expect that it will have problems since finding great crit partners has been one of the more challenging things I have attempted this year.

I am prepared for problems. I am prepared for rewrites. I am prepared to go to a coarser grit, take off the shiny top coat and rip into the subsurface to make this story right.

I’m willing to do whatever it takes. Bring. It. On.

Gulp.

Comments (2)

By Leslie, May 29, 2010 3:50 pm

I am a tool

But a damn sharp one. And today I rounded that most wonderful of goals Draft 4 success.

San Francisco….now called A Fault in Time (catchy, eh?) is complete in fourth draft and approaching query readiness. OMFG.

Nearly ready does not mean ready. Oh my lordy no. I have not angsted over this puppy enough. Want to know how I know? Look at the colors on the image to your left. See all the greens, oranges and dark blues? Those are scenes that are in 4th, 5th and even above! Nicely polished happy scene-lets.

Pink is a lowly second draft and bright blue is third. So! while the overall story is complete in the fourth draft I have some scene-lets that I’ve recently added. Some are very small transitions to fill plot details and some reflect changes that I made when I turned one of my characters a little bit darker.

But I keep track of them so I know what has been really edited well and what words are still pretty fresh and crunchy.

I am still wildly happy about this, because this kind of editing goes pretty quickly for me. We’ll see what the beta readers say.

lol.

So what the hell is a scene-let? I’ts not a true scene, but I break out action in a finer granularity, makes it easier for me to write. Not a true scene in the Robert McKee screenwriting defintion. In fact, I guess mine are actually beats, but I hate to use that because it has other means as well. Sigh, overloaded terms.

“Scene”: A group of beats which result in an action through conflict in continuous time and space that turns the lives of the characters around into another direction.

Comments (0)

By Leslie, May 28, 2010 9:06 am

A definition.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines Procrastination…

procrastination, n.

1. The action or habit of postponing or putting something off; delay, dilatoriness.
Often with the sense of deferring though indecision, when early action would have been preferable.

2. The postponing or deferring of something. Obs.

Leslie defines Procrastination as

1. The fiddling around with the new iPad, playing with bluetooth keyboardiness and rearranging the applets.

2. The adding to and editing of the soon to be wildly famous Dow Humous Genre decision tree. haha.

3. The adding to of the detritus in the blogosphere of posts, like this, that are really not worth writing and merely take up the valuable bandwidth that AT&T has finally decided she is allowed to have. grrr

4. The not writing of, and thus not finishing and readying for query a fault in time which she is supposed to be doing RIGHT NOW.

…..

Comments (0)

By Leslie, May 22, 2010 8:07 am

Wow, June is right there… And it’s still raining in Northern California, where I am pretty sure my exorbitant housing prices entitle me to full rain cessation on May 1. HEY PEOPLE, WE HAVE LAWS!!!

So while I scrape the moss from a amazingly wet winter off everything I own, I’m making a list of the things I am going to do this summer:

1. Camp in my Airstream Trailer. Yes, Yes Yes!!!! No phone, no interwebs just me and a huge slabs of granite, a  remodeled trailer kitchen, and my computer for week(s) of writerly productivity. OK, Chris (the DH) can come too. And maybe the kid. If he’s good.
2. Pen my YA SciFi in the June SavvyAuthors Boot Camp with my friends in the Savvy OR! 30 days or Bust!
3. Query what was called San Francisco, and is now called A Fault in Time to my list of agents.  OMG its nearly ready – who knew!!! All growed up and has a name, even!
4. Walk my neurotic dog, Kyra, every day. Yes, damnit EVERY DAY. slacker….
5. Tend to my house.  I’ve been in a writer’s frenzy and well, lets just say it could use some tending. But hey, I’ve nearly FINISHED  a book that is queryable!!!
6. Kayak with aforementioned nutty dog.
7. Streamline the Newsletter production for the SavvyAuthors.Com Newsletter – I’m the editor.
8. Read many, many, many books.
9. Write and submit more Flash!
10. sleep.

Comments (0)

By Leslie, May 17, 2010 4:23 am

San Francisco is soooo close….

It even has a much better title than San Francisco. I’m sure that title will change, but still.

I edited the first three chapters and the climax chapter again and realized it’s really ALMOST DONE. Wow.

I’m not saying it’s War and Peace or anything, but:

• the main plot and the sub-plot weave together and resolve in the climax.
• the antagonist character is real and I feel for her, and actually wish she could win
• I hurt a little for each and every whore
• I think the choices that my two MCs make are the best ones, but not the easiest
• I think the resolution is a little unexpected
• I don’t think I left any dangly bits (OK we’ll see about that)

Now it’s time to man up and put down the polish, right after I look at just a couple more chapters…..