Sam Downing

This is the first image that came up when I googled "Chapter 12". Um.

Dear Chapter 12 of My Book,

Remember when you were just a scrappy little first draft? All cute l’il mismatched sentences just waiting to be polished up into nice shiny paragraphs. And remember when you had that exciting new subplot injected into you? Gosh, was that an exciting time!

Not so long ago I thought you were cool, Chapter 12. That there was no way you could possibly be more awesome. How wrong I was! Closer inspection reveals that you need some work. Boy oh boy, do you need some work. Did you realise that your sentences are awkward? Your dialogue weirdly leaden? Your pace strangely disjointed?

Not to mention all those adverbs you’ve scoffed.

Because I’m your pal, Chapter 12, I want to help you. What say we spent the next couple of days whipping you into shape? You’ll be as slim and trim as your writerly brethren in no time!

Yours sincerely,
Sam Downing

Here’s a cheeseball-fabulous video I make a point of watching on the first day of summer each year, because I’m a huge lame-o. (But not as big a lame-o as you guys in the snowy, wintry, gloomy Northern hemisphere!):

December 1 marks the end of Nanorevismo for 2009. (Ditto Nanowrimo. Kudos to those who had a go – you have my respect, and my sympathy.) But just because the month has finished doesn’t mean my revisions have!

Last night, on the final evening in November, I pulled My Book’s word count back under 100,000 to a not-much-smaller-yet-somehow-more-manageable 99,919. Now I know how dieters feel when they manage to squeeze back into a pair of old jeans.

Let the wild rumpus countdown to 95k words start!

(Yeah, I saw Where the Wild Things Are last night.)

No, not the song from Hairspray.

This week my mum finished reading My Book. Which is rad (though it does make me feel strangely exposed, like she’s seen me in my underpants). She said she enjoyed it, but added it’s “no A.K. Rowling”.

Thanks?

I supplied Mum with a PDF which she printed out to read. Which is terrible for the environment, but I’ve now inherited this physical copy of My Book, the first time I’ve seen it printed and bound. I can hold it in my hands!

Unfortunately having the words there on an actual page makes every awkward sentence, every bloated stretch of text, stand out like it’s been highlighted in fluroescent blood. The thing still needs an arseload of polishing before it’s ready to send out. I already knew this (I didn’t spent the last several weeks revising it just for fun) (even though it has been kinda fun), but having a physical copy of Book holds it to a galactically higher standard than if I were just reading it on my Macbook’s screen.

One the bright side there are a lot of bits in there I’m really happy with – proud of, even! The less-than-spectacular bits will one day, fingers crossed, be equally rad. Head down; revise, polish, edit. I’ll get there. (more…)

I have never participated in NaNoWriMo, because it took me more than five years to complete one novel and even the thought of spitting out a whole one in a month is morbid and terrifying.

And when I say “complete one novel” I mean “write something that has a beginning, middle and an end”. It is yet to be edited, so I am well chuffed to have stumbled upon NaNoRevismo (something I had conveniently planned on anyway), a whole month devoted to “[plunging] yourself into the filthy, glorious work that is revision”.

Yay!

Slashing unwanted adverbs and pointless filler and nonsensical garbage (I honestly have no idea what I meant when I wrote “the gold sunset [was] dispelled by the hues radiating upwards from clusters of imperious high-rises”. Huh?) is fun! On the other hand, I’m beginning to understand the meaning of “Kill your darlings”. Chopping out some of those sparkling-and-clever-but-ultimately-useless turns of phrase is hard.