Saturday, October 04, 2008

Upcoming workshop and editing plan

Next Friday -- 10 October, I will be going up to Berwick upon Tweed to give a two hour workshop on writing romance as part of the National Year of Reading. Apparently the ticket sales are going well. So I guess it won't be just the librarian, my daughter and I...
Anyway, I am looking forward to it, but also feel a bit like I have just emerged blinking into the sun after doing my revisions (or more accurately rewrite)
I have also started revising/editing my Governess one. I am going to try to be methodical about this one. I am tempted to get a Story Board and a stack of index cards. Is this a procrastination technique or merely a reaction to not having seen a huge hole before I submitted the Viking?
Or will I get the cards, decide that it is too much like hard work and go back to the method that works for me? Because my books tend to be about 15/16 chapters long, it should in theory be easy to divide the board up my way.
Several of the big flaws with the Viking -- were the hero/heroine leads, and the laying of way too much pipe. In other words I over complicated the back story and made the main characters react to events rather than cause them. Characters in a book make their lives happen. Would I have realised this with index cards?
I know that such measure are not good when I am writing the first draft. There is really very little that can come between a writer and the blank page. Writers eventually have to write. But after that, lots of things can be done. I figure that I might as well give it a go. I know several writers who swear by such measures.
In other news:
The honey has been harvested -- 22 pounds. It was a poor year. The beehives now have to be made ready for winter -- with mouse guards and the annual treatment for varrora.
The pumpkins are about ready to be harvested as are the tomatillos. Tomatillos are green tomato like fruit that are used in making green chile sauce. They are very sharp in flavour and very easy to grow. The chile crop is decent this year but again because of the lack of light, the plants did not fruit as well.
And I have started to have fires in my new fireplace. Instead of having blue hands as I type, the fire now crackles merrily. Of this could lead to procrastination -- stirring the coals, putting more fuel on, burning index cards etc etc.

2 comments:

Donna Alward said...

LOL at burning index cards!

THe trick with the governess is truly that the hero leads. If you keep that in mind, I think the rest will look after itself.

D

Kate Hardy said...

Donna beat me to the comment about index cards :o)

Good luck with the workshop. And the board.