Day 3 Writing Challenge Results

So, first of all, THANK GOD for modern technology:

How to Succeed in Novel Writing...

I know piracy of musicals is bad, but if ever there was ever something to get me writing sexy, romantic scenes, it's this man's voice.

HE IS SO BEAUTIFUL.

It's always made me sad that they over autotune him on Glee. I saw him and Starkid in November, and honestly, he's just phenomenal live. I wish I had been at UMich for the original A Very Potter Musical (and Sequel).

*Criss Rant Over*

Word Count: 11,424 (+2858)

Pros: I am essentially done my first draft other than a quick little HEA conclusion at the end. The hero and the heroine are together and all the conflict is resolved.

Cons: EDITING EDITING EDITING. I'd like to have this story ready to pitch by January 26th, which is scary fast considering I have no beta lined up and short contemporary romance is a whole new genre for me. I'm going to let the manuscript sit for a day or two while I crank out internship cover letters (oh, those things?) and maybe study my Russian (textbook has collected dust ALL break). Spring semester is around the corner and as excited as I am to go back, I'm also getting panicky.

And I need a haircut. So there's that.

10 Day Writing Challenge

So, I’ve finished my last novella/short story. Yay! And by finished, I mean signed, sealed, and delivered. Of course, all of those terms are antiquated in today’s day and age of electronic submissions. It will probably be 4-6 months before I hear back about my novella.

This means that I need to move onto a new writing project. Over break, I edited about half of my YA, but stopped after hitting an editing block. I find that when I try to do too much editing at once, the quality of my editing decreases drastically. What I really need to do is get back on absolutewrite so I can find a beta. I have an account on the site, but don’t know my password (oops) and the email it is linked to was uber hacked (double oops). And since you need 50 posts to use the SYW and beta features on absolutewrite, I need to get posting on a new account!

So until I get back into my YA, I decided to write another short/novella. I had a few ideas, but decided to go with a contemporary since I have the best feel for the characters in it. I’ve found that with short romances, you’ve really got to know your characters because the sparks have got to be instantaneous. You’ve got to highlight internal conflict without a whole bunch of external conflicts to bring it out.

Historical-wise, I’d really like to do something Gatsby-era. But considering I have about twelve internship applications to complete and a new semester around the bend, I’m going to take it one new project at a time.

So, my goal is to get 10,000 words and a second draft of a short contemp romance in the next ten days. I’ll post my results and the lessons I learn along the way (I have a feeling pacing is going to be a major issue).  I also generally don’t assign myself word per day quotas, but hopefully with such a short story it will be manageable.

Does anyone else have writing goals for this month? Let me know!

Righting your Writing: PIN number and Redundant Descriptions

One of the things about virtual betas is you sometimes  never know what you're going to get, and as someone who already gets anxious over email, having "beta" in the subject line frightens me more.

It turns out, the beta I sent my novella to was pretty fantastic. Not only did she give my positive criticism, she gave me a lot of helpful editing tips for my next round of self-edits.

One of the tips was about redundant phrases. Honestly, I never paid much attention to editing for these before because I was worrying about more important things. But weeding out redundant descriptions is a great way to tighten up your writing and make it more terse.

See what I did there? Tightening up your writing means it is more terse, so terse was superfluous.

Ahhh.

Other examples from my own writing include:

burning flames- of course flames burn

and

condescending snear- a snear is a condescending look.

I've also noticed in my YA when I'm describing the advice column my MC writes for, I often put the column name before it. I mean, like every single time. Redundancies, like repetitiveness, are like hitting your readers over the head with these:

Don't Do It! (or wear these, please)

You can find a list of common everyday redundancies here: http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/redundancies.htm

They have ATM machine and PIN number, which reminds me of my days in high school financial literacy. My teacher really loved to point out the "number" was the "N" in PIN.

Check your own work and see what you can come up with! Have any silly ones? Let me know!