Correction

The pictures ended up in the wrong spots. Sorry, but the first picture is definitely the better one. Believe it or not much cleaner too.

Destruction - not always a bad thing

The last two days my husband and I have turned this - into this -
It may look worse in the second picture but believe me, it's much better. Next we'll replumb the house and get ready to sheet rock not just the bath room but the kitchen, dining room, and living room too. When we bite into a project we don't just nibble hehehe.

Anyway, while we've been working on our investment property I haven't had much time or energy to work on revising my MS. So far I've managed about 3 pages. I can't let the slow progress bog me down, though. I know this is a great story and hopefully it will be a great ms after this next revision. I'll be concentrating on a few specific things and since I've been away from this project long enough to see it with fresh eyes I'll also be looking for some of the same things I focused on in my early editings and revisions such as consistency with plot and character information and effective dialogue tags. I want each action that my characters perform to paint a picture inside the reader's head and enable them to see what's happening as if they were watching a movie. Ok, great expectations for my writing, after all we don't read in color or even in 3D but I remember when I was growing up someone once told me to shoot for the moon and maybe I'd get close. Color and 3D writing are probably a whole nother galaxy dream shot (hehehe) but as with the house project I'm working on, I seem to be a glutton for punishment.

Scrambled ramble about writing

This was taken in the pasture at my grandparents' farm. There were three young raccoons out for an afternoon stroll. I guess they were too young to care that they're supposed to be nocturnal.
Hi and welcome to my blog. My first entry was more or less a practice-test page. I'm new to blogging but not to writing. I've been writing since I was 17 and that was a long time ago. I'm still looking for a home for my first MS - Hide and Seek. I'm taking a workshop that so far has been really beneficial. It's made me look at a few things that I hadn't considered and I believe another revision is in order. I know this story will sell. With a minor tweak, and one small dose of something sweet it will finally see the light of a book store shelf. I'm probably dreaming but so was every other writer before they finally made it. Once this is complete I'm on to my next WIP. It has been in the works for several years but put on hold, evolved, been nixed and then reborn into another whopping idea. Now I'm in the process of writing/shorthand writing it to get a first draft. Over the years I've had ample opportunity to try several different methods of writing most didn't work for me but a couple seem to work. They got me through my first draft for Hide and Seek. That was my first actual completed MS. I suffered from the apparently common phenomenon of starting a story, decide it's time to edit after a few chapters, lose momentum and miraculously have an idea for the next best seller suddenly so clear in my mind only to finish the first few chapters, begin editing, and do it all over again. It would actually be embarrassing to admit how many stories I had started before I ever finished one. Usually I would go back and try to breathe new life into an old idea but just like before once I began editing it was like the wind was knocked right out of my sails. Then it finally hit me (did I mention that I was slow ;-) that I just had to finish one draft and then I could edit it to pieces but if I didn't finish one I'd never have anything to edit. Honestly I knew this all along - at least somewhere in the back of my mind I knew this - but I was always looking for that special trick that would make everything just click. Numerous published authors crank out book after book. How do they write so fast? There just had to be some magic potion or some super computer program that just pulled it all out of the mind and put it all together nice and pretty ready for print. I found out as many others have and still more eventually will that there's nothing magic about it. Either you finish or your don't. Either you have something to edit or you don't. At least that's how it is for me. I'm sure there are people out there who can write a paragraph and go back and edit it till it shines and then go on but for me if I stop to edit at all I lose my story momentum. With that said I have decided to allow myself the privilege of writing junk. Not only can I write junk, I can write a junky scene sketch or paragraph sketch and go on to the next part. That's what I call writing shorthand. So far it's working but I'll keep you posted. That's it for me tonight. Stay tuned for the next blog where I ramble on about something else ;-)

Busy, busy, busy...

Today my husband and I ripped the walls out of a home we're renovating. We managed to put out about 20 bags of debris. Man I'm tired. Thankfully I'll have a couple of days off from that and maybe do some writing. Working on the first draft of a romance time travel and taking a workshop for my finished MS - Hide and Seek. Hoping to resubmit soon with better luck.

To the left is a picture of a bird that likes to hang out in my back yard.