Well, actually, watch me work it.

This weekend will be another write-a-thon. On the agenda: articles for HAND/EYE plus revisions and new material for Julius.  As you may have noticed, in spite of good intentions of getting organized and keeping to a schedule, it appears I’m all over the place.

[Insert loud sigh]

This week at HAND/EYE I spent most of my time getting magazine subscriptions out (this is part of the drawback of a two person office. I gather the magazines and stick them in the envelopes, print the mailing labels, update the database, and Keith drives to the post office and pays for the shipping).  The big issue of the week was getting two boxes out to a store that sells HAND/EYE in Canada. We’re trying to keep our costs down and this time Keith and I thought it would be best to go via UPS.  Well, it may be cheaper, but in terms of navigating UPS.com I was close to an apoplectic attack. Now I know why my former assistants hated me when I would tell them to send something via UPS. And to Canada? Well, there’s customs to deal with and all the confusing forms. So something that should have been relatively simple took days. I mean it. Days. However, it’s done. The two boxes are on their way to Vancouver and I hope we get many, many, many reorders because now I know how to ship to Canada via UPS.com.

Now I have to zip and write and edit. I can give you little preview of what’s upcoming. This week we’re focusing on a a series of documentaries on Mayan Weaving, a South African artist, a glass artist, and a ceramicist from Oz. All good stuff.

As for Julius, I am in revision mode. There are parts of the story that seem too chatty. I need to add more descriptive narrative, and more action. Not hardcore chase scenes, since none of the characters don’t run–not even to catch a bus–but everyday actions that further develops their personalities. The one activity they seem to enjoy is eating, so maybe I can get them to cook more often, shop for food, etc.

I’m also trying to play around with the language. This is a challenge. I’m pretty straight forward in the way I write, but because I am attempting to duplicate some of Alvah Bessie’s experiences with Corinne, I think it would be interesting to emulate his voice since he is an important character in the story.

Well, we’ll see how this weekend turns out as I work it.

I’m practicing a dual writing process. For my small writing group, I am posting revised chapters I previously submitted to the Novel’s List at IWW while I send new material to the list.

Somehow this method seems to help with the new material because I don’t need to go back and see whether a detail that plays in the future gets somehow turned around in later chapters because I don’t recall it. In other words, it’s helping with continuity.

For each round of revisions, I’m either cutting or adding scenes, switching the order, reworking dialogue so that it sounds natural to the ear and so on.  I’ve realized, though, that much of the narrative still needs more oomph, or more in-depth detail.

I have to admit that I’m losing patience with myself and I want to finish the damn book so I can move on to the next step (the synopsis and query letter. Ack!), but I can’t reach this until Julius is perfect (or as perfect as possible). So now as part the revision process is to add more depth, show more of the senses, maybe play around with some similes and metaphors, but instead of tackling an entire chapter per day as was my method, now I’;; focus on revising paragraph by paragraph, line by line. Oy. There are a lot of lines in Julius, but thank goodness I have short paragraphs.

Onward, page one, paragraph one, line one . . ..

If you may recall about two months ago I lamented about a particularly nasty and tactless critique I received via the Novels writing list from one of the members of the Internet Writing Workshop. I was told that I should read The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman.

I haven’t read it, but another member did and after reading her comments it got me thinking that maybe the “Nasty One” had a point. I don’t think that the first five pages of the chapter need to be rewritten, but maybe the first two paragraphs.

Since it was my turn to submit this week to the new writing workshop, I decided to take a very relevant part of the story in Julius and move it right up front and center. So far I’m pleased with the change.

I’m putting more weight on this group rather than the IWW partly because we agreed that we would provide critical and detailed reviews. At IWW sometimes we get blanket “I really like this story” comments without any other remarks. Four crits have come so far and the overall consensus seem that I need to further develop the relationship between the main character and her significant other. Seems like a fair request.

So it seems that the entire chapter needs to be reworked a bit more. There a few minor nits in the prologue, but those four pages have been tweaked to death and, if I do say so myself, they’re pretty good.

I have two more crits waiting and afterwards I will go through another round of revisions.