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POINT OF VIEW: Updating Your Golden Oldies

45 record - pixabay

It happens to all of us published authors, eventually. We sell a story, it lives out its initial life with a publisher or magazine, and then it wings its way home, ready for its next act. And sometimes, if it’s a really old story, it needs a little love to bring it up to your current writerly standards. As authors, we are always learning and refining our craft. The way I write today is different from how I wrote last year, and waaay different from my writing in 2014 when I was first published. Which brings me to my current … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: The Fixit List

checklist - pixabay

The manuscript is written, it’s gone through my beta readers and is finalized in third-draft form. And it’s ready to go out to the publisher/agent/pitch wars/wherever. Almost. There’s still one last step I take before unleashing my work onto an eager and unsuspecting world. (side note: can someone be both eager and unsuspecting?) The fixit list. Every author who has been around for long enough has one. It’s the list of things you know you do wrong, the ones you’ve been called on again and again by your editors but somehow never stop doing in the heat of writing. I … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Winning the Draft

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I’m in my happy place. 🙂 I just finished the first draft of “Dropnauts: Redemption Book One” (I know, this one has had more names than Diddy) last week. I’m in the middle of the second draft, and that’s one of my favorite parts of writing. Why, you ask? Because: I don’t have to push my poor little writer’s brain to be extra creative and come up with all sorts of new things, like I do in first draft. The story is still fresh to me – in fact, it’s the first time I actually get to take a step … Read more

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Point of View: Edits, Edits, Edits

Scott

It’s an inevitable part of writing. When you send off your finished manuscript to the publisher, as any writer will tell you, there’s a palpable sense of relief. Your long writing slog is finally over, and you can turn your attention to something else. If only that were true. You know how they say “for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction”? Well, for every manuscript, there’s an equal (and sometimes opposite) edit. or three. Edits are the boomerang of the writing world. I really can’t complain. Well, obviously I can. LOL… but edits are a part of life … Read more

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Point of View: How I Edit

Scott Editing

Hey all, I am breathing down the neck of my first completed novel in twenty years. “Sciatháin” (which many of you may know as “Oberon”) has been through some serious twists and turns to get to this point. I started the story that eventually led to this novel in the mid-nineties. It was the first “gay” story I ever wrote (or at least began), with a sexual opening sequence that was, in a way, my coming out as a writer. I shelved it after a few scenes – well, I shelved pretty much my whole writing career – for a … Read more