Tuesday, July 17, 2012

What Have I Been Up To?

Seriously, I've been belaboring over the revision of Speaker of the Winds. It's my first time revising anything except my short stories.
This has been an eye opener, because when I've written my first drafts of novels, it was anything goes, get the words on paper and you're good. But, now, it's all a matter of every word counts.  So, I've been learning a lot about revision.  How it should be done, and how I shouldn't have been doing it. But I suppose that's how we learn.
I'm finishing my first draft of the revision in the next few weeks, then I'll start over the right way after I've taken a little break from it.
I'm going to write a short story about a couple in love and the wife turns into a zombie, but he can't let anyone know because of his job. (Zombie slayer) Yeah I know, it sounds incredibly lame, but I'm going to make it awesome. Any how it's a short so it doesn't matter.  It just needs to make me feel like I can get something completed from A to Z so I can feel some success and get back to work on the bigger projects.

FYI, I've decided to try out Brent Weeks revision methods. After all my failings in revision, they seem to make the most sense. Plus I can't wait to get it out to first readers. My wife (Brittany) and a few other family members who are also writers. That will be a stepping stone for me. Brittany thinks I need another contest to get me motivated, and I believe she is right. So we're on the look out. Personally I think I need one that has a prize if I'm going to draft an entirely new work so I feel some pressure about getting it done.  So I'll look for those.  Let me know if you see any.

Oh, I also went to the 'Got Stories' Rhemalda Publishing event here in SLC last month. It was awesome to meet some of the local and other small press authors.  I'll probably never get so much one on one time with other published authors. My gratitude to Brett and Emmaline Hoffmeister for putting the event on.
You can check out their books and authors here at their website.
It was really excellent. They had tons of snack foods, a half dozen authors presenting and another half dozen hanging out in the audience. All the participants were dedicated writers and supporters of the presenting authors. One author, Cass Peace, came all the way from England to present. Some other came from back east.
Brett and Emmaline are so generous. They even gave for free many of their authors first edition's.  I took the poster/calendar, King's Envoy by Cas Peace (she signed it for me!!!), Son of Ereubus by J.C. Chancellor (she also signed it for me), and The Bone Sword by Walter Rhein.

Did I ever mention that I'm using some new writing software?  I had been using the Space Jock yWriter software. I've since purchased My Writing Spot. It's only a few bucks on Android Market and the free Google Market place web app allows me to write from anywhere with an internet connected computer and pick up where I left off. Even from my phone. So I bought a wireless keyboard and I've been doing that occasionally from my phone at work. I'm thinking an Android tablet would be better as I can't see, but a few sentences on my phone thought.