Is every word important?

Not only that, every sentence and every paragraph. The first few draft of a project, we write like we talk. For some, that might suffice, some people's talk is meaningful and compact. One of the joys of writing is tightening what you've already written. It amazes me how many different ways a sentence can be phrased. The challenge is keeping it real. Every paragraph has a sentence, and every sentence has words, so how important is every word you write? I suspect, pretty important. If three words change to one without sacrificing ambiguity or continuity, your story sounds polished. That's what is meant by tightening a paragraph. How to do that? Find an amazing thesaurus. You might want to check my favorite one here

Short but sweet. God bless. Until next time.

On the Home Stretch

Good news, I'm almost done with my second draft of "That Girl." I've had a little time off work and I've worked hard to get so much done. So it's proud of myself, I am. The third draft will be the one where I work on the presentation, so to speak. For that, I'm going to do a lot of reading.

Does anyone else get stuck when trying to describe what actions and mannerisms a person uses while talking? Some authors seem able to divers away from the norm. I find when I read a lot, I get a better sense of people's idiosyncrasies. You can only scratch your head, purse your lips, furrow your brows so many times before it becomes obvious to readers that you have no imagination. Hands on hips, clenched fists, lame humor can become boring in time. Tears, really how often does a person tear up. In real life people's feelings get hurt and their reactions are internal. Their hearts harden, their pulse quickens, they even feel the sting of tears behind their eyes. It becomes a dilemma for authors. It's easy to get in a rut. I don't think I'm alone in this. If you read the same author over and over again, it becomes obvious. I guess you could call it that author's style of writing and I think that would be true, but we know a lot of times there are no words. So you have to go and find them, whether through observing or experimenting.

These are just my thoughts on things. I'm by no means an expert, if I were, I'd be a best selling author. I just know what I know.

To all who read, God bless and happy reading.

Reading not on the best seller's list and censoring

I've come to enjoy free ebooks. What did we do without them. Free is always good and made better because it's, well, free. Something about a free book just makes it a good read, no matter how labor intensive it is to get through. I wish I could read all the free ebook, but I've already got bunches I haven't gotten to yet.

Hey, what about Pay Pal censoring what they deem to be immoral books? They are a private company and I guess it's okay if they censor, though it seems un-American to me. We have to be very careful about censoring. It starts out small and grows like a malignancy. Pretty soon they are censoring books with questionable language, then religious themes, then violence, and next love. Seems like it's possible they might try and censor emotions as well.

That's all the wisdom I have today. Maybe tomorrow I'll be bestowed with more. God bless.

More complaining about second drafts

I feel like I've written four or five books, instead of three, though only one of them is published. Consider first drafts, for instance. I'm sure there are a lot of people who write first drafts and then don't turn around and totally rewrite the second. For me, the first draft is one to just get down on paper as quick as possible so as to get 'er done, as Larry the Cable Guy would say. The second draft is where I start the weeding process. I prune it and prune it until there's hardly anything left except a few of the strongest scenes, then I watch them flower. This is where I start getting really excited, but this, of course, is not the end of the rewrite, even when I'm done with the second draft. What do you think, another draft? Well, yes. This one will undergo more tightening and weeding, but it's also the start of some serious proofing. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but a stitch in time, saves nine. Let me tell you something about proofing. It's never done. Even the proofers of the best writers of the best novels don't get all the mistakes. It seems to me that errors seem to stand out more in ebooks, doesn't it? A lot of that, I think, is due to ebook glitches, but I still more proofing errors in my Kindle that when I'm just reading a paperback.

So, until next time, take care and God bless.