The Writings and Musings of B.A. Matthews

Suck it up, Princess

Okay, today’s post was going to be a post on my editing/revision class and what I’m learning from it. Well, I’m learning a lot and that’s sorta the problem and why I won’t be talking about it today. I have to live the creeds I preach and today I didn’t. That regression, such a small thing, bothered me as soon as I’d realized I had done it. Not only that but it destroyed my entire good mood, which is actually a pretty hard thing to do.

 My husband helped get me out of the funk by calling attention to it though in a way I really didn’t appreciate at the time.

 What did I do, you ask?

 I defended my work.

 It was unintentional but it affected me just as badly as if I had done it knowingly. I know I can’t be there to defend my work but the person in question hadn’t read my work. I attempted to explain what I had obviously missed originally but what I ended up doing was defending my work. I had answers but I hadn’t shown this in the description.

 Afterward, all I was able to take from it was that my story design was “pretzel-ly”. My story is a bit convoluted but I had made it partially that way deliberately. For some reason, being told so really got to me.

 So, what am I going to do about this blow to my ego? Well, tomorrow or Tuesday, I will look over this again and with a slightly more rational eye. I will see all the good advice that she gave me and note what I think needs to be noted. The other suggestions I will look over and see if I can make them work.

 Sometimes, it’s really hard to watch someone misunderstand what you were trying to say about your novel. And sometimes you have to remember that they may have not have misunderstood what you said.

 And that’s all right, too

Posted in Blogs on January 29th, 2012 by B.A. Matthews | | 4 Comments »

Update on Revisions

Time for a much delayed blog post from me. I’ve been keeping myself so busy (either sick or editing) that I keep forgetting to post. However, I was reminded forcibly by a friend who recently wrote on her blog post about blogging is part of the “building a platform” job of being an author in today’s digital age. Plus, I actually have stuff to talk about.

 Years ago, I heard about Lani Diane Rich, who also goes by the pen name of Lucy March. I first heard about her because she has published Nanowrimo novels and because nearly every year, she offers a spot in her revision class to one lucky Nano-er. Now, of course, I know a lot more about her, mostly because she and her husband, Alastair, have one of the best writing podcasts out there, Storywonk (Seriously, it’s on daily, monday – Friday. If you’re looking for a writing podcast, listen to theirs). I have been hoping for years to take her revision course though and this year, I am pleased to be able to say that I was able to enroll.

 Lani is a great teacher and I will probably end up doing a full post on Sunday about what I have learned so far in this class, since that will place me squarely at the midpoint. As a quick explanation, I can say that I have learned more in the first two classes than I have been taught about structure and editing during my twelve years of Canadian schooling. Due to her class, I was able to go back over my manuscript and discover what my seven key scenes are. I also learned that at least one of my key scenes needed to be rewritten, since it wasn’t doing what it needed to. I’m also going to be spending a bit of time this week trying to reorganize about 25% of my manuscript. I have learned that Act II of my manuscript was about 15% longer than it needed to be. This means I either need to re-identify my key scene there or that I’ll need to play around with that particular scene and see if it can’t come earlier than it currently is. Once again, if you’re interested, come back on Sunday for the full write up on how I’m applying her class to my book.  If you’re looking for a class yourself, keep an eye on her main site and sign up whenever she next offers it. Unless you’ve studied Structure and Editing individually, I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll learn something from this class, even if you don’t always agree with Lani’s personal opinion about how to fix up your novel.

 One of the other things I’ve been looking at lately is rebooting my Dual Melodies. I put up a message saying that until I figured out where it was going that it was on a hiatus. It technically still is, but I’ve been looking at structure and how I’ll be applying it to this story. It will end up being just a novella and I’ll still be offering it here when I finish writing more of it. Then I’ll take it for a few runs of edits and perhaps sell it as an e-book if it is good enough. Like I said, it’s technically still on hiatus but I wanted to let you know that I haven’t forgotten about it. The main problem I ran into was that when I started fleshing out the novel and I wasn’t focusing on characters, the story changed signifigantly enough that I felt I couldn’t keep putting it up in its current form. Hindsight though is 20/20 and I’ve now realized that the story it became, isn’t the story it was and that those characters still wanted their story told. Now that I know I’m working on two different stories, I can promise that planning and writing on it will be starting up again.

 And that is where my update stops. I’ll try to have a nice post about the class up for all of you on Sunday. Till then, keep writing and let me know how you’ve been, what you’ve been working on and if you have any tips on how to survive the editing/revision phase.

Posted in Blogs on January 25th, 2012 by B.A. Matthews | | No Comments »

Happy New Year!!!

It’s 2012 and I must admit, I enjoy starting every year with making resolutions. I have a confession to make though. I don’t usually end up keeping them. No matter how well I have planned those resolutions or how easy those resolutions are or even how much I want to accomplish those resolutions, I seem to not do it if I phrase it in a resolution way.

 So this year, I’m not going to make resolutions. This year I am simply going to have fluid goals and plans and keep myself on track with those.

 My first goal is to compete in the Year of the Epic Query, otherwise (or more commonly) known as the Epic Year of Querying.  Basically, my friends are I are challenging each other to finally get our work out there. My friend Danni is going to be score keeper and if you check out her blog you’ll see on the side of the page The Epic Year of Querying and all of our names with a number below them. Currently that number is 0 for all (I believe) but as we begin sending out our work, it will rise. I’m not sure if we’re going for the first to 100 queries or the first to 100 rejections, but either way, it’s going to get very heated towards the end of the year.

Personally, my first thing to query is going to be my Falling through the Threshold, a novel I have written about a woman who discovers she isn’t human when she is kidnapped by vampires. It is fully written and I am in the process of editing it right now. I just got back critique information on part one of Chapter six and I’m hoping to hand in the second half of this chapter as well as all of Chapter six next week.

 My critique group, A Bitch of Writers, is going quite well. The group has gotten large enough that we separated them into two groups. We now have six members  and while we didn’t have to separate the group, we all find it quicker to only have to keep track of two critiques instead of five. Four to a group is our maximum number for now. We found that four kept us very busy but any more tended to take too much time to do.

 What about you? Do you make resolutions every year? What are they if you do?

Posted in Blogs on January 3rd, 2012 by B.A. Matthews | | No Comments »

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