Monday, March 26, 2012

Almost a man, and yet...

...sometimes still a little boy.

My Sonshine turned sixteen last December. It's an interesting age. Anyway, I was collecting towels off the clothesline yesterday when I spotted a feather lying in the grass. It was almost an ordinary little feather, maybe three inches long and only a quarter inch at its widest, but it was yellow on the end. I have no idea what type of bird it might belong to.

So I picked it up and called to Sonshine. I showed him and he thought it was cool--for being a bird feather an all--and then he took it and went into his room and stashed in the container containing the rest of his feather collection. That really tickled me, both that he still has his collection and that he knew where it was.

I have I told you lately how much I love my Sonshine?

And it was beautiful weather this weekend. As mentioned, I utilized my clothes line. I love towels and sheets that have been line-dried. I even did a little writing outside, sitting in the sun, soaking up some vitamins D and E. I had to use pen and paper as it's too bright to see the laptop screen, but that's okay too. It was helpful to do that.

Speaking of writing, I barely eeked out last week's word goal, but I did make it with 32 extra words. Yesterday was the start of the new week, requiring a word count of 1K. But I didn't make it. I'm at the point in my manuscript where I have few new scenes left to write, a few decisions to make, and a lot of revising. I'm at 18.8K out of the 25 I'm shooting for.

That's still a lot of new words you say.

True. It is, but many of those words are going to be needed during the revision process where I'll be layering in emotions and internal narrative--the things I usually gloss over during the first pass. I've even begun cutting words and phrases that sound nice, but don't really add a lot to the story. Which means I'm now losing word count too. Argh!! But I'll need those words in the serious revision stage.

I wrote 1700+ words last week summarizing my story. It really was very helpful in pin-pointing a couple of problem areas and the turning points for my heroine. Now I have to get to those revisions, fixing the problems and smoothing out the rough edges. Culling the useless words, adding the important ones.

The next step, I think, is to print out the manuscript and read it hard copy. Mark the pages with notes--like where the heroine's turning points are and what they need to encompass. Reading hard copy also helps you find misspellings and missing words. When I read aloud, I can catch any flow issues.

I have my work cut out for me. Better get to it--

Have a good week.

1 comment:

mtnchild said...

Some of us never grow up - I view feathers as a gift from the angels. Not all the chicken feathers in the backyard, but the different ones that just show up.

Seems your writing is coming along, good going!
Love you
Mom