Round One (and three quarters) Cynthia 10:21 PM

I have been fortunate to read two excellent books in a row--Room by Emma Donoghue http://www.roomthebook.com/#, and The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips (thanks to Dr. Scott Rogers for the recommendation). The first I mentioned in a previous post. The second I finished today. The Tragedy of Arthur was not only a good story, but the ensuing "Shakespearean" play was beautiful. Go here: http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2011/04/24/tragedy_of_arthur for more information about the novel if you're interested in reading an awesome book.

My next reading assignment is The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, then I'll finish Fool by Christopher Moore, and The Cattle Raid of Cooley: Táin Bó Cúailnge (which I started on my flight to London in 2008). As annoying as not having a laptop has been, it's given me time to catch up on all the reading I've put off for other things (Blast you Hulu! Blast you Bejeweled! Blast you other things I'll not admit to!)

I haven't done any editing this week since I am sans laptop, but I'm hoping to get it back in the middle of the week so I can edit my little heart out.  I've been romancing the idea of taking off for a week and spending eight hours a day writing like a crazy person...nothing but a giant bottle of wine and a bunch of sushi to sustain me. It would be tough but...suffering for art and all that.

Speaking of suffering, I do need to go inside a mine as research for my new novel. Anyone game to go with me?

Wish me laptop!

Blog off....

Round One (and a half) Cynthia 10:38 PM

My laptop is going in for repairs tomorrow. They say it will take up to ten days to fix, but I’m almost at the end of my warranty and thanks to some broken clips, my screen sits kind of cock-eyed. It’s hard to say goodbye even for a little while, but I’m biting the bullet. I'm keeping my hard drive with me, though…no matter what Atreyu the Dell service technician says. You don’t need my pictures and poetry to reattach the monitor, buddy.

Obviously that will affect my ability to write, but thanks to my good old-fashioned click drive, I’ll only be slowed down, not stopped.

Speaking of writing, I’ve been reading a lot about the correct way to write and revise and this is what I’ve been paging through:

Writer’s Digest (July/August 2011) urges me to use the “Geyser Approach to Revision,” and provides me with five steps to do so. A couple of pages later, there’s an article called “Make Your Tone Pitch-Perfect” with seven suggestions to keep in mind when writing and revising. A couple of pages later, I see “Revising Your Path to Publication” with four steps to follow. Those are only a few of the To Dos when working on my novel. If I flip open The Writer (July 2011), I can read “Fine-Tune Your Fiction,” “5 Steps to a Better Manuscript,” and “A Checklist for Improving Conflict,” each with their own lists of To Dos when writing or editing your work. If my math is correct, that means I need to complete approximately 144 rounds of edits and have at least 400 articles and short stories published before anyone will consider publishing my novel. Trying to get my first novel published without completing every one of these steps (while attending every available writers conference) is like…well…trying to use the bathroom without taking your pants off. You can do it, it’s just going to be messy.

(Blog off)