Day 2/70, Giveaway, and More Inspiration

This may be my last post for a while. We’ll see how things pan out once I’m in California, where two people who are not me and Sailor Boy are getting married.

Day 2 of the challenge (Monday) was a bit slow for me. I only got a couple of hundred words down, and I was doing a lot of revisions. So I’ll really have to kick it up today to keep on track. To wit: this post shall be short.

Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld are the current “writers in residence” at Inside a Dog this week, and are discussing writing, lucky numbers, each other, and the weird way Justine likes to talk (wait, they are making fun of Scott’s accent? Crazy Aussies!) The post on first drafts and rewriting was especially interesting to me right now because I find that my process (barring the Zero Draft) is very similar to Scott’s: I like to read what I’ve written the day before, fix it, and move forward. I tend to revise as I go. Scott said:

I write about a thousand new words a day. But I start each day by reviewing the previous three days’ work.

This has two effects. One, it means that I ease into my writing day, editing and rewriting those 3,000 old words before facing the deadly blank page. By the time I finish that I’ve got a head of steam up, I remember what’s going on in the story, and writing new words doesn’t seem impossible, like it did right after coffee.

It’s like getting a running start.

The second effect is that by the time my first drafts go to anyone else, I’ve been through every word at least four times (usually more) and across several days, when I’ve been in different moods and have had different tolerances for purple prose, bad similes, and fuzzy language.

This is usually me. Except not this book. No, for this book, I’m just biting the bullet and moving ahead, even though I’ve changed something and I know I’ll have to go back and fix it. It’s definitely a new challenge for me. But new challenges are fun, huh?

Or maybe this is my first “zero draft.”

Hey, check it out! Vicki Lane is doing a giveaway and what’s this? Why, it’s Under the Rose! Vicki is a friend of mine from my Tampa RWA chapter. Sigh. Yet another person I won’t be seeign at RWA this week. A bit weird not to go. It’s the first one I haven’t been to since I joined the organization.

And finally, I leave you with a little something care of Holly…