Hmmm...

Everything was going too well, I should have know better. I almost had a mini heart attack over the weekend, when my computer crashed and wouldn't come back to life! Luckily it was my motherboard and NOT my hard-drive with all my writing on it that died. Also luckily, my husband and I were able to craft me a working computer out of three dead ones and now I am back in business! Well, except for loading everything from my old computer and reinstalling all my programs and fixing all my settings. But that shouldn't take longer then an eternity to do.

The experience did get me to realize I need to back up my work onto our external hard-drive more often. And thankfully it was a lesson that I didn't need to learn the hard way. Alright, back to installing.

Have a great day! :)

Fine Art Print by fosterbk

Hello again! Remember me?

Okay, so I'm not very good at blogging regularly. I've been busy, but I guess you figured that out. Hmm...I guess when I'm gone this long without posting it's best to read my last post so I remember what I was talking about last time. Be right back!
* * * * *I'm back! Wow it's been three weeks since I posted last? And you are all still following me? Thanks! I promise I'll try to post more from now on.

Anyway, since we last met, our hero (me) had just finished editing her first book and submitting it to a contest. I probably told you this already, but I ended up splitting my book into two novels. The first book is done and I am now working on the second. I had thought that the second book was about 1/3 of the way done. Hahaha! Apparently I was mistaken!

I finished editing it and then broke it into chapters that were about the same length as the chapters in the first book. My first book ended up with 19 chapters and a word count of about 98K. My second book currently stands at 7 complete chapters and 44K words. So if I want the two books to be about the same length, then I'm actually about halfway done. But the story isn't!

I had no intention for this story to be two books long and I certainly had no intention for this story to be three books long! Well that and I don't think I have three books worth of story. It's more like 2-1/3 books worth, 2-1/2 at most. Now I was planning on doing a third book, but it would be about what happens after this story is over and also cover some backstory on one of the main characters.

I'm not sure how this story got away from me, but it seems to have a mind of its own. I feel like I'm stuck in Zeno's paradox. No matter how close I am to the end, I just can't seem to get all the way there! Does this happen a lot? Because I'd really like to finish this story sometime in the near future and it is just not cooperating with me. And I thought my characters were troublemakers...

Story Time Fine Art Print by elr104

Well That Would Have Been Nice To Know...

If read my last post you'll know that I stayed up till ungodly hours of the morning formatting and editing my story so I could enter it in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest. I was and am very happy I got it done on time. However, it turns out that after you submitted your work you can still edit your document until the contest submission period closes. So really, I didn't have to rush like a crazy person to get it done. I had two more weeks to play with it once it was entered.

::sigh::

Oh well, if I had waited and given myself more time then the contest would probably have filled up then I would have been really annoyed!

The nice part about this realization was since I was able to go back and edit it, I was able to do one last leisurely readthrough. Now I thought I'd taken out a lot of adverbs and unnecessary words during the first edit, but apparently not. My husband has jokingly dubbed me the Queen of Adverbs and Monarch of Commas. I think I reduced my document by over 100 words just be removing slightlys and quietlys!

I am now REALLY glad I got to do one last edit as I'm sure this story would NOT have made it past the second cut with all those adverbs! And now that I know I add them too often, I can be more careful when I'm working on the second book.

I read an article someone posted on Twitter, which I unfortunately didn't save, about how every author has one thing they repeat in their writing that they shouldn't. The article's author's problem was repeating lists of three things, like "It was old, gold, and cold." I now know that no matter how good it sounds in my head, adding slightly to almost every verb is NOT the way to go.

Do you have a quirk that you've noticed in your writing that you usually end up cutting out come editing time? Let me know in the comments.

Have a great day! :)

Comma Print by papergangsterprints