on temporary fire

Sometimes I know when something in one of my stories is off. This is boring, says the inner muse. It's putting me to sleep.

That's about as much as the muse with share with me, though. Usually I'm not sure what the problem is and I almost never come up with a fix right away. Today I saw the problem and knew how to fix it before I drank coffee this morning.

First up: boy shuffling, exercise and then I'll fix the novel's problem and make the plot scream with ecstasy, even though it's not one of those stories.

How did I manage to see/solve it with so little effort? No flipping clue. Yo, I'm elated when I pinpoint a problem. Self editing is not a strong point so I don't often see there is one, much less where it is or what to do. I need crit partners.

How do you root out and destroy bad stuff in your writing?
Reading aloud?
Crit Partners?
Letting the work sit for a while and pretending you've never read it?
Following Author X's Guide to Self Editing?
Luck?
Or is your first draft perfectomundo?

Comments

  1. Anonymous10:00 AM

    I have the attention span of a gnat. If I can't sit down and get involved with the story and type out at least three pages before clicking over to surf on the internet, then I know something needs to be changed.
    However, I could never figure anything out Before my coffee, lol.
    Sam

    ReplyDelete
  2. Carrie Lofty11:53 AM

    When I don't want to write it anymore, something's gone wrong. Generally, the problem is not with me but with whatever crap I've written for the past week. Back up. Start again.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Beth7:10 PM

    I always wrote it all out and then after a good chunk is done - say 10 chapters or so - I weed some stuff out. Then I weed more when it's all over. I do wee little weedings after every scene if Snookie didn't react how I wanted.

    But I'm pretty good at self-editing, if I wait at least a day before looking back at it. (I'm pretty good at editing in general, or so I'm told.) Of course now I don't really write and I just kinda blog and I don't bother editing that at all.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous12:53 AM

    I had to wait until Brad and Lori started having postcoital yaps in my head. Until then, I couldn't figure out where I was going.

    This particular block has taken forEVER to overcome. Gaaaah.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wylie Kinson1:10 PM

    I favor the 'marinate' method, myself. Put it away and pretend I never saw it before. It sometimes helps that I have an atrocious memory .... Yes, I even surprise myself during the re-read!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

more fun and hi-jinks at RWA.

To the Board of Directors of the Romance Writers of America: It has been brought to our attention, by several of our romance authors, that your organization no longer considers Medallion Press, Inc. a legitimate publisher according to your guidelines. We were surprised we did not receive official notification directly, but instead discovered it was posted on several RWA internet loops. Accordingly, we request this letter be published in its entirety in the RWR Report so all members may understand the nature of the process that eliminated Medallion as an RWA approved publisher. We will also send copies of this letter to all our own RWA member authors. We are dismayed you declared Medallion Press no longer a legitimate publisher. In July of 2004 we met all of your qualifications without incident by showing sales of 5000+ copies of USA Today Bestselling author Nan Ryan's The Last Dance. Several months prior to Book Expo America 2005, we received a call from your office alerting us to ...
Read more

No snark. Bad puppy. No. (Review stuff.)

A two star Amazon review on His American Detective: "Bodice ripper about gay men by a woman." and I'm longing to comment "don't you mean a waistcoat ripper?" God, no. Stop me. The reviews rarely rattle me any longer -- except when I spot a truth in a bad one. When that happens, I actually lose sleep. This means I still care about writing.  Speaking of reviewers and writers: A couple of days ago, a writer said she was tired of getting white ladies writing reviews of her books. She had an excellent point in the long run: her stories are meant for a particular audience and she wants them to resonate with those people and get more reviews from them.  But that first line was just....horribly obnoxious. I say this from my POV of course. Not a white lady who writes reviews -- but as a review grubber.   Anyone who disses any reader (especially ones that give honest reviews) deserves to be cast into the pit of being ignored.   ...
Read more