The hoopla of last year's contests are at a rest and I find I'm ready to take another look at my finished mss. (Is there really such a thing as finished?)
I went through these last year, and found tons of things to fix, change and be embarrassed about. "I didn't do that! OMG!" And then I put them up for input and more was revealed. grin
So I grabbed a bit out of one for ACA Valentine's Contest and found myself thinking. "Good Lord, what a mess." It looked really good the last time I saw it. Are there edit gremlins that invade virtual space where I save these?
What I saw were said-isms all over the place. I'm sure I'd find other offenses if I took more than a few minutes to snatch and grab an excerpt.
A full sweep, some rewriting and editing is certainly in order.. more so than I thought.
So what stands out for YOU when you pick up a project you haven't worked on in a while. What glaring writing No-no's do you find?
And do you get sucked into your own story and forget you're supposed to be working?
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Comments: 322
I can honestly say, I have never reread a piece of mine, even ones that have been published in the paper and copyedited, where I don't see little and big things I'd change now to make it better. I take that as a sign that I am getting better, however slowly.
"What are you--" (backwards italic)
grrrrrrrrrr.
Here's something I saw today that we can file under the "Whodda Thunk It?" Category:
144. Who Moved My Cheese?
Spencer Johnson, Putnam
Dealing with change at work and in life (NF) (H) $19.95
Weeks in Top 150: 356
That's almost SEVEN years on the Best-Seller list for an animated book about making changes.
Wow. Ya never know...
I'm sure it wasn't immediately evident that it would end up on the best-seller list for 7 years!
Yes, I always put my stuff away and let it age. When I get it out later, the mistakes stick out like sore thumbs.
Cathy
And getting sucked into the story when I'm supposed to be editing? Oh, yeah.
Steve, I'm amazed at Cheese's success, too. And consider how short the book is. Simple made simple. And it sells.
Cathy
Other things? Thats for whichs, repetitive words, repetitive actions (he shrugs and then she shrugs and then he shrugs again...)
Cathy
Oh here was a good "DUH!" moment. I had a friend look at my first chapter. One of the characters said that she just came from the "Wedding Dress store" - yep the ole wedding dress store. Dozens if not hundreds of people had read that and not caught it. My friend was like, "Did you mean to say 'Bridal Shop?'"
duh
Nope, I meant "Wedding Dress Store." Now excuse me, I need to go to the "Canned Foods, Perishables, Vegitable and Meat Store" to pick up some groceries....
Cathy
Just for the record, I've designed my own cover art for all of my self published books at Lulu and the reproductions have always been wonderful. In a nutshell, Lulu is indispensable for writers like myself who like to see the finished (or not quite finished) product.
I feel like an idiot.
Flattened a worm for nothing.......
Guess I'll read the thread now.
I was a lost Wombat. QQ
Interesting idea on the Lulu thing. Maybe that's what I'll start giving as Christmas gifts to family members and friends. They all want to read what I write but don't like the reams of paper falling all over the place. Can't say I blame them.
I also could not sign on to writingwombats.gather.com ; it said the page was unavailable. Weird stuff. Time to run a full system scan after this.
On the topic of the day, I recently went back and read my FC1 first chapter. There is a lot about it that I still like, but there were also quite a few saidisms, use of adverbs, as structures tieing together sentences and so on. When I re-edited the entire book, I found work to do in every chapter, but less as I got toward the more recently written sections. There's no question that nearly a year with the wombats, reviewing other writer's works and working on craft has had an impact.
As Beth said above, now when I'm looking at a text, I'm seeing different things than before, since I now tend to avoid the most obvious issues upfront. One result has been that my wombat short stories have been pretty quick from first draft to final edit. Now if we can just get rid of these maximum word limits.
Going over to read Jamie's worm-destroying exploits.
I'm back from the Vacuum Cleaner and Electric Broom store. Cleaned up my mess. Made Italian sausages with (homemade) roasted peppers (with homemade tomato sauce) and baked polenta for dinner. What can I say? I got inspired.
Now I need to work out...
Cathy
Jamie, impressive squishing the worm; would like you to exterminate him from my system too!
Scan in process. Let's try again tomorrow.
Cathy
John: Cool re your friend!
Steve: Good news is just around the corner!
As for editing? So far I've eliminated a lot of "that" and "had". Beth mentioned repetative phrases. Judi (thanks!) pointed out repetative "sounds" such as "hair narrowed in an arrow downward to his belt" (narrow, arrow, down). I'm hunting those out and exterminating them. (Hair tapered toward). I do far better editing other people's stuff than my own. I haven't edited a lot yet, but I'll be looking for help!
On the guessing part, another Wombat has guesssed four correctly, so we have a tie. Oh, my!
John, kudos to your friend. That's a great accomplishment. And a dream for us all.
Wendy, hope the baby's doing better.
I've finally started reading the Valentine's Day stuff, though I've only made comments on Paul's so far. What's with all the dead folks in our stories? Poignant valentine's day indeed.
That Lulu stuff sounds really neat, Jill. I might have to try it. I edit from hard copy, but a book would be easier than loose sheets or large binders. And the price is pretty good.
I'm going to read for myself tonight. See y'all later.
Cathy
As a person with a great deal of Lulu experience, I recommend it highly. It is much easier to see things that don't work in the proper book format than on-screen or in typical ms format. More on this later.
Hoping Wendy's little one is on the road to recovery. I remember one tenacious ear infection middle child had that took awhile to cure. It's so frustrating when a child is sick or in pain and there's nothing you can do but wait.
I haven't read most of the Valentine's entries--I still need to write my own. This weekend will be busy, with hubby home on Saturday. Maybe I'll be inspired. Or not.
Like your new look, Jamie. Though you seem a bit off-kilter....
Jamie I'm sorry you missed my invitation over here. I'll bet you were most valiant defeating the evil computer worm. smile
The baby is a little better. The numbing drops are a God's send. She still won't eat anything but ice cream, soft and cold.
I'm off for bed. My son's final IEP (Individual Ed. Program) meeting is at 7:15am. I've been doing this for 10 years, seems hard to believe this is the last one.
Ken is right about reviewers and galleys and dates. I found this out when trying to get my book reviewed. A month after publication is too late for most reviewers, they want a galley (not a book) about two months before publication.
The biggest mistake I think I made with my own book, was not having an agent. I had to learn everything as I went, and trust the publisher, not a good idea. A good agent takes care of some of these marketing and publicity things as well as getting the book sold. If I ever do another one, I will try to get an agent first.
Happy Friday everyone.
Sy, dear, what are you doing up at 4 am?
I haven't seen the worm show up on my computer either, but I stomped it anyway.
As for the backwards quotes... You must have smart quotes on in Word. Go into "Autocorrect" then "Autoformat" and uncheck the "replace straight quotes with smart quotes" box. Voila! Problem solved.
However, I discovered something by accident. If you type up an email on gather and put no one in the Send box, it will come back and tell you it needs an address:
AND, in the message box is how it will appear! Like a draft feature.
Anyway, it was new to me.
(((((((((((hugs))))))))))))))))) to Jules and all around.
Kewl John. I figured Gather wouldn't send out an email without an address.
I've got croissants, bagles and muffins on the buffet. Juice, tea and coffee are in the services. The coffee is really hot so do be careful.
The thing I notice most in my new work is my word choices are much better (ask me next year..giggle) and things seem to flow much nicer.
Off to meet with the teacher.
Wendy, thanks for the great coffee and muffins.
John, LOL
Jamie, thanks for the tip.
Amy, happy Friday to you too.
Jules, (((((hugs back)))))
Si, good morning. I hope you're taking a nap.
What I mean to say is I'm working really hard here this Friday morning.
I feel so much better, almost normal. I can even hear out of one ear! And I have this feeling something good is going to happen today. For me or for someone I know. Always trust intuition, I say. Or maybe the drugs wore off. Can't tell for sure. :-)
Alright, I really am going to go work now.
How are you doing today, June? Feeling alright?
James, an earlier version of Norton used to give me this warning. I never figured out why, though.
My husband has never liked Norton. He's told me why, but the language was beyond my grasp. If you are concerned you can find Spybot Search and Destroy on the internet. It's what we use for a back up to our firewall. Mr. Picky likes it so who am I to argue.
Off to see what I can do with this V-day challenge.
Geez, Steve, tough choice. (Or read them both together, you can recover from the first with the second). Say Dana, maybe we should team up on this.
I notice Ed Nudelman has a new troll. That's sad, and disturbing. Has Ed ever said an unkind word to anyone?
Norton and Symantec work against it, but I do not believe that it is from Gather. I suspect there is some other person (via email) or website that the people who contracted it have in common.
Sinmon, it is so nice to see someone so objective about such a sensitive subject. Bravo!
Wendy - Spybot is OK, but Adaware is far better. Better than Norton and Symantec and the others as far as spyware is concerned. Antivirus agents don't do a great job with spyware because it is not their main business.
Jamie - you may see a bar at the top that says that certain content has been blocked. Sometimes business rules change and they don't tell you that they updated Internet Explorer.
Julie - my grammer hasn't improved that much either. But she is 96, so I don't expect much change.
Why has this place been so quiet?
Could someone send me a link to where I can find all the entries so far so I can comment?
And
Cathy
Links to Valentine articles
Your pictures are all back now. Not sure what the deal was this morning.
Glad you're feeling better, June. Keep on resting.
Valentines Day story
I have a lull so I decided to see what's up with all the wombats
Hope all are feeling well The sun is actually shining in Chicago! yeah.
will check out the Valentines stories!
It would be interesting to know everyone's lamest valentine gesture or gift
I knew one guy and I were on the outs when he bought me a mixed boquet when he had bought me roses for 4 years. He was on the way out for me. But the lamest was a single plastic rose that sang some corny song I think it might have been Elvis. Major cheesey.
I really didn't know what to say so I said thanks and stuck it in a potted plant. It stayed in that potted plant for awhile. LOL
Happy Friday!
Patti-a singing plastic rose, that is tacky! Has anyone seen the Hallmark commercials where the lady is a pet-sitter and she keeps hearing the dogs "talking." Then it turns out that her husband has this talking stuffed dog as a gift for her. Maybe it's just me, but I think those three Hallmark stuffed animals are tack itself. I told my husband he's toast if he even thinks about getting me one!
I once got a 49 cent bargain card with a packet of daisy seeds in it. He was too broke to buy me flowers, so thought I should grow my own. There. Top that one!
Okay, I'm utterly exhausted now. Going home. Hopefully the good mood returns. It is soooo good to be back at work. I do love my job. I'm just tired. So tired.
....dragging self to car....
....removing butt from chair now....
Ever been too tired to leave your office?
Yet I have this dream, often, where I think I have bought the most romantic gift ever, and when she opens it, it is one of those singing bass plaques. And, for some reason, when she opens it, I STILL think it is the perfect gift.
Cathy
I suspect I have all the micro-novel ballots I'm going to get, so maybe I should post the authors soon. Anyone care to weigh in on this?
Here are some interesting tidbits:
The three people whose micro-novels were not correctly correctly identified by anyone were: Amy Williams, James Rafferty, and (Human) Katherine Cundiff.
John Phillipp, Sy Garte (er... Simon), and Wendy were each correctly identified by only one guesser.
June, Judi, Jamie, JK, and I were each correctly guessed twice.
Ken was correctly guessed three times.
Pat S. and Pat B. were each correctly guessed four times. (Even though Pat B. openly posted her entry before entering it, she still was only guessed by four voters.)
And the most recognizable entry was written by our dear Beth, with 6 correct guesses.
Any thoughts on what all that says about us?
Cathy
You could close the voting early, Dave. Has everyone already voted?
I'm still kickin' though. A bit more slowly than usual. Had so much energy this morning. Not so much now.
Abby, I read your entry. :-)
Abby, I can tell by the look on your face that your entry is going to be a doozy. Maybe I can talk Tootie into writing one. We'll see.
Dave, I suck at guessing too and I'm ready to hear the results of the contest. Bring it on.
Hurry, hurry. If I place, I can use that in my pitch to the publisher I have in mind for my micro.
At least I guessed 3 correctly.
so, if I can sell a book or two and make enough to pay off that home equity loan, THEN I can quit...
uh, yeah. Right.
In 2007, it's in "start menu", then "word options", then "proofing", then "autocorrect options", then "autoformat".
Hide it much, Bill Gates? Sheesh! You need a freakin' egghead with a PhD in Advanced Word Menus to find this crap.
Bill Gates owes me $80 for the 2 downloads I have to use and $869 for a new laptop. Think I can get that from him? I mean, what's $950 to him? Pocket change?
I have 53 words to shave on my entry for V-day..off to view Dave's post.
Guess the wombats are playing online tonight. I had my dinner, did my dishes. Not rushing you at all, Dave. Enjoy your meal. Have a glass of wine, maybe an after-dinner cigar. Relax...