Writers' Chasm

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly blog hop created by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk to help writers stay in touch. What do you mean it's Wednesday already? Where did the last week even go?  What I'm Reading:  Still Son. I'm supposed to return this stack of books to the library in the next week or two so I should probably get on that. I miss the days when I used to be able to roar through a book in a matter of days, even hours. What I'm Writing:  The holiday weekend threw a wrench in my plans to have Weredragon's polish done before today. I do only have six more chapters to go, though, so it shouldn't be much longer. After that, I'll take a look at the three trunked manuscripts I have in need of revisions to see if those spark anything and I do have a new idea if I can figure out how it starts.  What Inspires Me:  My mom and I went hiking over the holiday weekend and the deep valleys and thick trees reminded me of the inspiration being Weredrago...

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly blog hop created by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk to help writers stay in touch. What I'm Reading:  Still on Son and Unprotected. I miss the days when I would read all the time and go through multiple books in a week. What I'm Writing:  I'm halfway through Weredragon's final polish and I'm very happy with the changes I made in revisions. I feel like it's a much stronger novel for them. I already have my next project in mind, if I can get a good feel for the characters and inspiration for the beginning.   What Inspires Me:  I was going to post videos this week but Blogger is being extremely uncooperative so I guess I'm just going to have to link them up.  First up is Amy Purdy and Derek Hough's quickstep performance from Dancing With The Stars . It's definitely one of my favorite performances this season (of which there are a lot). I'm going to miss watching her dance. Len put it best when he said...

This is it. Your manuscript is done except for one last read to make sure that everything is clean. You've probably read it so many times that you're ready to just shove it out the door. Here are seven things to keep an eye out for in that last read. If you use track changes, you may want to turn it off at this stage just to make sure everything is in order. 1. Multiple punctuation Sometimes there are two periods at the end of the sentence, sometimes it's a period and a comma, or sometimes it's something else. It can be easy to skip over there so check carefully. 2. Missing punctuation On the other end of the spectrum is missing punctuation. Under this umbrella is missing quotation marks. Keep a close eye on the beginning and ending of dialogue.   3. Extra spaces It can be so easy to insert an extra space between words or sentences. Between words often gets caught by spell check, but sentences is easy to miss. 4. Missing words Sometimes, in editing, a word ...

I have what I call a "drama threshold" also known as the point at which there is so much drama involved that I can no longer handle it anymore. I should probably note that this applies to books, TV, and movies, not life. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, how much drama is just enough and how much is too much. One of my favorite shows of all time is Castle. I started watching it my freshman year of college when season four was airing and I fell in love instantly. I marathoned the entire show over the course of about three weeks and then continued to watch at least an episode a day for the next week because I didn't want to let it go. Fast-forward two years to where we are now: season six. I haven't seen the last two episodes and I never intend to. From here on out, I'm done with the show. What changed? The show crossed my drama threshold. (I'll try to be vague in the interest of avoiding spoilers.) There was a main conflict that started all ...

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly blog hop created by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk to help writers stay in touch. I thought it had only been a couple weeks since I did one of these last. Turns out it's been almost a month. Whoa. Between finals, coming back home, and then the whirlwind of activity that comes with being home, the time flew by. What I'm Reading:  I'm midway through Son by Lois Lowry. I've pretty much been waiting for this book since eighth grade when I read the rest of the trilogy, so no pressure. At the moment it's living up to my expectations. I'm also reading Unprotected: A campus psychiatrist reveals how political correctness in her profession endangers every student by Anonymous. It's very interesting, but I find myself disagreeing with some points. It's not the easiest read so I've been making my way through it gradually. What I'm Writing:  Actually getting Weredragon ready to submit to agents hopefully before th...

It's one of my goals for this summer to start blogging regularly again. I haven't been doing very well at that for a long time. To help me do that, I'm also going to be starting a weekly series on grammar and mechanics advice. Storm season has arrived (though I have yet to actually witness a thunderstorm because I slept through the last one) and with it a common mix-up. This is lightning. The brilliant flash of electricity that accompanies thunderstorms. If you're on Facebook talking about storms coming in, this is probably the word you want. When something gets lighter, it's lightening.  Some examples: The lightning lit up the sky. That's just heat lightning. Lightning rods are meant to protect buildings from strikes. Lightening dark blue paint can be done by adding white. I am lightening the color of my jeans.  They don't have the same meaning and they shouldn't be used interchangeably. This has been my grammar-related rant for the we...

Last month I said the next time I did one of these it would be finals week and here we are. It's been a very busy month but a good one. Also, I'm hoping that once I get home I'll be able to start blogging regularly again. Writing:  Word count: 17,455 words I still don't have an official WIP, but that didn't stop me from easily setting a new word count record for the month. Hopefully that will be another thing that changes as soon as I get home. I do have some ideas. Reading:  Books read: 4  I did not, in fact, step up my game this month. The math says I'm going to have to read about 10 books a month from here on out to make it. Among those read this month were Battle Dress by Amy Efaw, which was easily my favorite for the month, and In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez. Movies:  Watched: 3 Much better this month than previous but still not great. I finally watched the Veronica Mars movie and it was everything I wanted and more. I'm...