I’m deep in the throes of revising the current novel manuscript, and it’s going well (yay!), partly because I’ve found a book with a novel revision process that seems to work well for me. The book in question is The Weekend Novelist Rewrites the Novel: A Step-by-Step Guide to Perfecting Your Work by Robert J. [...]
Archive for the 'writing process' Category
three books to help you revise your novel
novel report
So. The bad news is that the second act is a mess, and my first reader alerted me to the fact that my story actually starts with a scene well into the first act. Last night at writers’ group was the first time I’d touched the manuscript in more than a week because I’d been [...]
writer’s bookshelf: on writing by stephen king
I’ve been thinking about On Writing, Stephen King’s memoir/writing treatise a lot in the last two days, because Monday morning I awoke to some medium-to-severe back pain. A trip to a massage therapist didn’t help, and it felt even worse today. Grrr. In general, I lead a largely pain-free existence, and on days like these [...]
writer’s bookshelf: if you want to write by brenda ueland
This week, I’m recommending a book to all those tired and bedraggled writers who are now more than two-thirds of the way through National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo). If you need balm for your weary souls, this is it: If You Want to Write, by Brenda Ueland. This book was first published in 1938, [...]
writer’s bookshelf: negotiating with the dead by margaret atwood
Is it Tuesday already? Right-o. Here’s a book I’ve kept handy for several years now: Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing by Margaret Atwood (Cambridge UP, 2002), based on a series of lectures she gave at Cambridge on the process of writing and her ideas about identity and the writer. Part memoir, part [...]