I’ve finished the first draft of my book, and after a round of edits, have put it to bed for at least a month. Then I’ll go back and edit…and edit…and edit…and at this point, I’ll actually start to feel like the book is going to make it, and it won’t be the one that finally defeats me, and I’ll edit…and edit…and edit…and edit…and depending on how it works, this may be it, or I’ll do another three rounds of edits.
Like the man said, it’s not in the writing, it’s in the re-writing (the man being James Michner, who actually said, “I’m not a good writer, but I’m an excellent re-writer).
Trying different genres has been both the dream and the nightmare. I mean, I know romance, know its rhythms and flow…it’s like a melody, a song whose lyrics you can sing off by heart.
Children’s, Fantasy, Mystery, however, new songs. It feels like I’m back to childhood, trying to learn a new piece of music on the piano (and we all know who much I loved practicing *shudder*).
ANYWAY, yesterday I was tooling around on the Internet and came across Smart Bitches, who crack me up every time I read them. The joy of these posts is that on occasion, they post excerpts. I love excerpts.
Good ones inspire me, bad ones remind me there’s hope for all of us to be published.
I read the excerpt of a romance writer who *researches meticulously* because she writes about Aboriginal tribes and after a few pages of reading, I was left to conclude that ‘research meticulously’ was code for ‘stop taking my medication and channeling the spirit of the founding father(s) of the KKK, wrote what they told me.’ Ahh, ethnic stereotypes, ahh the minority who speaks like they’ve suffered a stroke. God bless the author. Hope for all of us. If she made it, so can we.
Then there was the author who used terms like “flute of love.” Today, my goal is to use that 3 times in general conversation…”sure, sure, ex-President Bush made some mistakes, but I see where he tried to use his flute of love to convince people about the war.”
Hope for all of us.
