Good luck Jilli!

I'm about to close up the hole left by my first major plot cut. Good bye Park District, Church Archives, Diane, Jon, and the collapsing tunnel.

Then I'm taking a break from new content and working on cutting out wordiness, repetition, and unnecessary narrative.

I know this thread is for original writing, but I'm so happy to be writing anything at all at the moment that I'm going to share my cautious glee at having a fic open and actually adding to it.

I wish I understood my brain. But at least it's poking its writing nose out of its lair again. Next step, learning how to lead it in the direction I want it to go rather than learning how to stay on and make something useful out of its ramblings. I'm thrilled that it's starting to ramble, but I'd really like to ramble in a specific direction.

I hope your writing nose leads you well.

I've started pulling out words and rephrasing some of the clunkiest language. Mostly I'm about cutting words right now, polishing will come later.

Editing away, though I didn't do much last night due to having to do the PTA newsletter. I starting again to wonder if chapter 1 and 2 should be combined once more. Chapter 1 is really shrinking under the weight of word removal.

Something else I'm doing is changing all my italicized text to a style instead of using formatting. I can't believe I was dumb enough to not do that in the first place, I almost always use styles for my formatting.

I didn't have a lot of time this weekend, but I did do some editing in the early chapters. The word count in what used to be chapters 1-7 has gone from 14,500 to 10,800. I did have time to read chapters 1 and 2 aloud to my wife and eliminated some awkward places and a couple of errors introduced by editing. I have a new respect for how easy it is to create continuity errors while editing.

I have put the latest chunk from my magnum opus Career Change/Advancement on LJ. All of a sudden, the writing works again. Three years is too long for a hiatus, and I wish I could figure out what was the trigger to make it work again. Then I could do it when/if the well runs dry.

It helps if I don't stop and think "What is a nearly-50-year-old woman doing writing fanfic?" Cause most of my brain is still in its 20s/30s.

I got feedback, and I may make a change based on it. I've made a couple of tweaks based on what he already gave me. He asked how G-rated I intended this to be which means he hasn't gotten to Chapter 32 yet.

Cutting more words and making more decisions. Mostly I'm concentrating on cutting right now, but there are plenty of other things to improve as well. One of them is the description of settings. I want to invoke a sense of place without laundry listing details, just enough to give the reader a catalyst to imagine the setting.

Description of setting is probably where I get the biggest contrast from beta readers. Some want much more detail to be able to build a picture in their minds, some don't want lots of detail slowing down the story or interfering with their own imaginings of the setting. A similar thing with characters descriptions too. I don't think there is a right or wrong approach if you do it well, people like different things. I don't intend to do lots of detail, but I still have a plenty to improve on so what's there is effective.

Instead of reporting, I'm reviewing yet another disability memoir. Sigh. This one has a twist, though. This guy became some kind of Navy commander by denying his mild CP and passing for AB. Which I find kind of admirable and fucked-up at the same time. And it's not something he ought to be encouragimg in The Youth, imo.(Special Comment Voice) Have you no responsibility, Commander?(/Special Comment voice) Because let's say that two out of 10,000 can white-knuckle it through like that, without succumbing, even briefly, to what Frank McCourt called the "Irish weakness" like this guy Quinn...what about the rest of us? My inability to pass is not a failure of heart. If it is a failure, it's a failure of wiring. I'd match my heart against most people's, actually. Seska, if you weren't so far away, I'd send you this and watch your head explode over it. Also, I'm disappointed...there are no dirty bits. If I write a memoir, one way or another, I'll put something smutty in it.