Monthly Archives: February 2010

Helpful sites

Some useful writing websites

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Over the past few weeks I’ve come a cross a few really helpful writing websites/blogs that contain some fantastic advice on writing, querying and getting published so I wanted to share a couple of my favourites.

The first one was linked to me by a friend and fellow writer and I spent nearly two whole days reading through every post on the blog because I found all the information so valuable to me as writer (plus I may have just been procrastinating a little on tackling all the problems in chapter six of my novel, which I am happy to say have mostly all been ironed out now). This blog is written by an agent named Mary Kole (who is also a published author)and offers some great tips on various aspects of writing, as well as some great insight into agents’ thought processes. It also occasionally runs contests. I have it bookmarked and I highly recommend it to any aspiring author. It can be found here:

http://kidlit.com/

I can’t remember how I found this second site, but I believed it was linked to from another site I was perusing. Like the first blog I mentioned, I found this blog to be insightful and full of great writing advice. This blog is written by a published author named Barry Lyga and he covers a lot of different areas of writing. His advice isn’t only very helpful for those wishing to develop their craft, but he also writes his blog in a very down-to-earth manner. This is another site I have bookmarked. It can be found here:

http://barrylyga.com/new/blog-writing-advice.html

Here are a few other sites I have bookmarked in the past because It hought they were helpful to my writing journey:

http://maxbarry.com/writing/help.html (His tagline is ‘help for writers’. They specifically offer advice on querying agents and approaching publishers)

http://www.fictioncentral.net/hpforum/index.php?act=idx (Although this is a fanfiction forum devoted to Harry Potter, don’t let that dissuade you from checking out their writer’s resources section which is a treasure trove of great writing advice and tips, especially regarding the technicalities of writing. You will need to become a member to view the writer’s resources section, but it’s free to join up)

I hope you find these sites as useful and insightful as I have found them to be.

Currently writing, Novel progress, Writing skills and techniques

First draft written! Now onto the editing.

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Last week I felt a great deal of pride and accomplishment as I typed the final words of the first draft of my novel.  It felt so good to know that I had just written over 50,000 words/20 chapters and got all of the plot that had been floating around in my head all typed up. But of course I am by no means finished my novel, and as much as I felt relief at finally get my entire story written down, I also knew I still had a big task ahead of me: editing.

The prospect of editing this novel is a bit scary, to be honest, since I wrote most of it without looking back, so I’m prepared for lot of typos and sentences that make no sense. In the past I have taken the approach of editing a lot as I write, constantly going back, revising and correcting. I decided to take a different approach this time around, mostly inspired by the NaNoWriMo process. So I wrote this novel without looking back, I let my muse take over and just typed, without worrying about typos and other writing disasters. Now I cringe to think what terrible descriptions, spelling mistakes and illegible sentences I will find as I proofread the finished product. Despite this, I actually think it is a good thing in a way because I will be proofreading with fresh eyes. Since I haven’t looked back since I started writing the novel it will be the first time I have read what I have written and hopefully this will mean I will more easily pick up on parts that need to be fixed.

I have a bit of a system for editing my novel, which is something else I am trying for the first time and so far I think it is proving to be helpful and efficient.

1. First I listen to the chapter on ywriter (since it has an option for the scenes to be read aloud). The voice lacks intonation and pronounces some words wrong, but it’s good being able to listen to the words read out and is helping me pick up on any typos (for instance, if I’ve written ‘form’ instead of ‘from’) or sentences where I’ve repeated myself. Sometimes when reading your mind doesn’t pick up on these errors, and even when reading aloud to yourself your mind reads as you think it should read, rather than what is written, so you miss those little errors.

2. As I listen to ywriter I fix up those errors as I go, but I also make notes on areas that need more description, more detail or need to be reworded.

3. After listening to ywriter, I go back and read the chapter in my head, making more notes. I’m using a colour-coding system: yellow highlighter for parts that need to be reworded; green highlighter for parts that need more description; purple highlighter for parts that need more detail (this is different to description – it means I need to add more content to the scene); and blue highlighter  for parts where I believe I am telling more than showing. I also write any extra notes in red, such as ‘check if this part is consistent with the letter from the first chapter’.

4. I then go back and fix up all the parts I highlighted, adding more description/detail or rewording where necessary.

5. Finally, when I believe I fixed everything in the chapter, I read it aloud to make sure I haven’t overlooked anything and it sounds alright when read with proper intonation. Then it’s onto the next chapter.
With my shorter stories I usually like to print out the story so I can read the words on paper and scribble notes with pencil in the margins, but considering the length of this story, I decided to skip this step (too much paper and ink!).

I really want this novel to be perfect because I have every intention on sending it off to publishers. I’m in the process of proofreading and editing chapter four at the moment (I’m up to step four and procrastinating because there is a lot that needs fixing in this particular chapter). Once I finish proofreading and editing through the entire novel I am hoping to get a couple of beta readers to read through the entire novel. The role of a beta reader is to read through and pick up any spelling or grammatical errors/plot inconsistencies/character flaws/etc. Basically it means having a fresh pair of eyes looking over the story and giving a different perspective.

I’m really very excited about this novel 🙂