I’m here. Really. I’m alive and gasping for air as I briefly lift my head from my works in progress. Yes, I said works. What have I been doing these last few weeks? Writing, writing and more writing. Or I should say rewriting, rewriting and more rewriting. Mixed in with that is my usual June madness of end of school activities, birthdays, dance recitals, and online workshops. Yes, caffeine has been my friend.
As I was busy finishing my superhero novel, I received a request for my Scottish ghost story. Since the editor had critiqued the portion she read, I thought one last read through, using her suggestions, would be a good idea before I sent it off. Now, the last time I looked at this ms was back in November when I first started submitting it. At the time, I thought it was perfect to send out.
Good lord, what had I put on paper?
Needless to say, a complete reworking of the first few pages ensued, followed by more tweaking of the rest of the book. I can’t believe how I forget the endings on some of my words. Why would I do that? Well, I know why. Because I read the story like it’s a movie in my head. I don’t see word endings, or even prepositions when I read, hence why I sometimes leave them out of my writing. Not a good excuse, but that is the reason. And yes, I do struggle with missed words a lot.
What I’ve also discovered is that I write in what I call Willy Wonka speak. If you are into Sci-Fi that would be Yoda-talk, meaning I write backwards.
For example: Concern etched his feature as he looked down at her.
I could have also written this as: He looked down at her with concerned etched on his features.
Why do I do that? Well, one, I don’t want to start every sentence with ‘he’, and two, that is how I talk. Its natural for me to think in this pattern. I don’t find one way more ‘right’ than the other, because in my head I see him looking at her in concern. The only words on the page could be ‘concern’, ‘look’, ‘down’ and ‘he’, and I would still picture the same image.
But, there are some people out there where order is a huge issue, so I am diligently cleaning up my manuscript before doing the exact same thing with my superheroes. This is just another part of writing. Learning, applying, learning, applying.
Just like I do with the rest of life’s lessons.