In Which I am Hit with the Goliath Warhammer of Reality

Doing something a little different with my "Friday Favorites" this week. (Which, by the way, I think I'm just going to keep on Saturdays and retain the title as a protest to society.)

I'm currently in heavy revision mode. I'd already changed the whole tone of the novel months ago, but many of the events had stayed intact, just with the MC viewing things in a much different light. (Basically, I added an emotional arc.) Now the events themselves are changing. Characters who got along great with my MC are fighting her. Antagonists who left her alone until almost the end are harassing her. My protagonist is protaging. (Credit to one of my Clarion West classmates for that phrase.)

I think, "Wow, go me. These are massive changes, I've never done such serious revisions to a novel before." Then along comes this awesome post from Adventures in Agentland. In a nutshell, it reads, Newsflash: I'm not doing anything special. This is how revision is supposed to work. Everything I called revision before was at best minor tweaking, a baby step above changing character names and correcting spelling errors.

One of the other things I've got to get in shape is the setting. My beta-reader told me that one of the major settings of the book doesn't feel like a real place, mostly because I've done such bare-minimum description of it. Enter the awesomenesses that are Scrivener and The Bookshelf Muse. Bookshelf Muse has a whole series of posts that take a setting and list every possible thing you could see, hear, smell, feel, or taste in it. Scrivener lets you import webpages directly into your research section. So now I can reference these insanely helpful pages without bouncing back and forth between programs. (As it turns out, there's tons of details about my setting I'm not using nearly as well as I could, another dose of reality there.)

So, there you go, a long-winded way of sharing three sites that have really helped me get through the editing this week. I won't have a whole blog post centered around my Friday Favorites every week, but it was a fun diversion. Now, back to (real) editing!

Friday Favorites Again

My favorite blog posts this week:

“sign” language -- Teach your kids to write early -- and get interesting notes from them.

Super Ninja Twin Mom: I will save the day as soon as the kids are napping. -- This should be a comic book series. Hey, I'd read it!

My Mother, The Strongest Woman I Know -- I hope when times get rough I can be this strong too.

An Ode to the English Language -- Ah, English, how you baffle us!

And More Late Friday Favorites

Here, have some inspiring posts from other mommies. And a belated Happy Mother's Day!

Dear Teen Me from Author Rhonda Stapleton -- Uplifting post from a pro writer/mommy.

A week without -- This inspired me to post my 100-word piece last Tuesday.

Better Late than Never

Blog posts I enjoyed this past week:

How I Use Scrivener -- How Scrivener is made of awesome sauce.

Revenge in 10 Easy Steps -- Is four months too young to plan revenge?

On Inner Ages -- This was so refreshing to read!

Avoid the Obvious in a Query -- I didn't think my query did this, but turned out I was wrong.

Links

Writing Friends:

Steam Trains and Ghosts

Without Really Trying

Kris Millering

Marie Lamba

Author Resources:

Writer Beware

NaNoWriMo

Fellow Moms:

Miss Topaz's DeviantArt