Wednesday, September 4, 2013

09/04/2013 Writing Wednesday!

Hello everyone and welcome to September! It's my favorite month, for selfish reasons (yay birthdays are fun!) and also because that's when the weather actually starts becoming less of an oven and more of a slightly cooler plus some random weather events thrown in. The only real downsides are that I still have to go to work, and work's AC gets confused so it's just cold all the time. I'll persevere though, I mean...I pretty much have to.

My round of editing completed on the 30th as I had hoped, now I just need to get everything reprinted so I can throw the pile of I hope not-crap at my mother. Now I know I mentioned before now she isn't my target audience, and that's true, however she read 'The Light Rises' for me and I figured having her stay with that era of the series would be fine, not to mention I just need someone who hasn't heard/seen anything about this story to look at it. Currently she is under strict guidelines to be done by December (she's...kind of a slow reader sometimes) which will give me plenty of time to rest up and prepare for November the rest of the way.

Right now my preparation involves opening the file for 'Through the Broken Mirror' and reading it. I remember where I was, but I want to make sure that when things get rolling again that the transition is seamless. I wanted to bring that up today because I'm sure there are several of you out there that will be in a similar position soon, and I want to stress that no matter how hard it is, you need to reread what you have so far after you've taken a break on something.

Think about it, you haven't look at something in potentially months, and your plan is to jump back in and start writing for it again. As much credit as you give yourself you need to be realistic and accept you aren't going to remember each and every detail or piece of minor foreshadowing that you've put into your story. Main things, yes I would expect you to remember, and specific plot points and/or events probably don't need refreshers, but it's the details that do. For me, stylistically 'Through the Broken Mirror' is very different than the other two, mostly because rather than a big open world that's being focused on, it's the world of one person and how it's being changed by the events. I want to make sure that I keep that same feeling as the story continues. For you it could be the way you're handling dialogue, or character descriptions or maybe you were building up to your next big action sequence and you want to remember exactly how you wanted it to go.

This process is also very hard to do. You will be fighting your brain the entire time you do it, mostly because as you read through, your brain is going to convince you that you already know everything about this part and can skip it. Maybe it's true, and even I'll raise my hand and admit that I'm guilt of jumping ahead. The thing is there are going to be places you need to fight your brain and force yourself to read more thoroughly. The way I do is this by convincing myself that I'm looking for errors, which as we all know is something you need to focus on. Doing this will make sure that you are paying attention and are able to grab back onto the emotions you were trying to show in your story.

I hope this was at least a little helpful. I'm looking forward to reading and getting the creative process started back in my head while I gear up for November. I need to start slowing things down a bit, which is going to be hard for me, but I'm sure I'll get some sort of sign that I'm doing the right thing. Remember, November is a big month, and the amount of writing we're going to be doing is ridiculous and while finishing is a matter of pride, if you need to slow down, take a break, or stop entirely due to pain, please suck it up and do what's best for you. I will likely be stressing things in the weeks preparing for it, so get ready for me to be naggy.

Thanks everyone for stopping by today. I am looking forward to a day off tomorrow. I know that I just had a 3-day weekend, but dealing with a sick cat made it go by all too quickly. If anyone has any suggestions on how to make a cat eat on his own, that would be great because it would cause a lot less worry while I'm at work. Anyway, I'll be back on Friday, so I hope everyone has a great rest of their week!

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