 Day Nine, and Time for a Word from Lemony Snicket!Posted by Elisa Beatty Jan 18 2011, 12:01 am Good morning, all, and welcome to DAY NINE of the WWF!! By the end of today, you should have earned your TENTH POINT, which is 1/5 of the whole darned Festival! I happened to stop over at nanowrimo.org yesterday, and saw this little gem from Mr. Snicket, re revising. Since some of you are busy wrestling your NaNo novels into submission, I just had to engage in a little shameless thievery and share: “Thirteen Tips On Revision: 1. Put the book aside and listen, for the first time, to your insecurities. Do not pay attention to what they say but to where they are pointing. They are wrong that you need to burn down the house but they might be right about starting in the basement. 2. Approach the manuscript ruthlessly, like it is a beloved and difficult friend who has asked to hear what they’re doing wrong. The misdeeds do not cancel out the love, nor vice versa. 4. Cut short and cut long. Change a limp image and discover the entire needs to be cut. Polish a flabby scene and learn it needs to be deleted. If everyone stays on the lifeboat it will sink and no one will be saved. There are hardly any novels that are too short. 5. Stand and pace. Feel the liberation of having dragged hobbled furniture from your room to lay out on the sidewalk for someone else’s benefit. 6. This is the third draft of this set of tips. Hopefully they are now more useful to the reader.” –Lemony Snicket 28 Responses to “Day Nine, and Time for a Word from Lemony Snicket!”Leave a Reply |
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Okay, so where are tips 7-13? Or were they cut during the revision?
I did really well the first few days of the writing retreat and then I was laid up with a pain that prevents me from sitting at the computer for more than a few minutes at a time. As soon as this problem resolves (and I pray it will be soon), I’ll be back! For now, I’m giving myself permission to rest.
I hope you will be pain free very soon.
Sorry about the pain, Laurie! And thanks for the awesome blog over at the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood today! For those over here who are wondering how to read the rest of it: click on the BLUE TITLE above the excerpt, or just go to rubyslipperedsisterhood.com.
Oh, and I think the “Thirteen” must be a joke on cutting during revision, since there were only six on the NaNo site.
Hope you feel better soon, Laurie. I hate pain!
Got up early, all ready to cut, revise, and write which I did for about half an hour and ‘register for Nationals fever’ took me over. Got so distracted and excited still haven’t gotten back into my story. Anyone here going?
Giving myself another 15 minutes and then it’s hiney in the chair- no excuses.
It was a real struggle to get my word count today because of the flying e-mails trying to get things hammered out for National! Which is so funny, because it’s not like we don’t have TIME. LOL
I am registered for Nationals and have my room as of ten minutes ago. I want to go to a show and I still need to arrange transportation, but as you say, Rita, it’s hiney in the chair time. I was in a writing sprint last night when we lost Internet and I didn’t know it. Instead of a 20 minute sprint, I didn’t look up for 45 minutes. I more than reached my goal for yesterday!
Wondered what happened to you last night, Teresa. Great to see you kicked butt!! Hope to see you back again soon.
Looking forward to meeting you in NYC
Can anyone say Par-tay?
I’ve been struggling the last couple of days
Hit a difficult part in my WIP, but I’m determined to get past it today!
May I suggest a writing sprint?
Ha! Yeah…I’ll be doing sprints tonight. The problem is, I’ve been revising and I need to move on to a new scene.
I had a major wake up call yesterday and today. I wasn’t going to write yesterday becasue it was a holiday and then today we had snow here in Maine, but then I was like ‘wait I have to get my points in for the WWF’ so I opened my WIP and meat my word goal for the day. There was a time that that wouldn’t of made a differnts. So Happy I’m doing this!
Yay!!! Good for you!
Hooray! I made my goal again!
Good for you, Carol!!
Another day of leaving my 500 word per day goal in the dust. I just finished 1,153 words on a pivotal scene that’ll need major revising, but at least now I’ve got something to revise! ; – )
Woot, Michal! You’re smokin’!
Got in almost 800 words today, so I met my goal and then a little bit more!
It was a strange mixed up day but made my goal. Moved through a scene and now following scenes are much easier to edit and write.
Great work powering through!
I did 3379 words today, so I made up for not doing 500 yesterday.
Very close to The End on both of these draft projects.
Wow, yes I’d say 3379 words today makes up for missing 500 words yesterday! I salute you!
Didn’t make my goal today. Did just over a 1000 but it’s a funny scene where my heroine comes face to face with her old lover and faints into a plate of potato salad, so I feel pretty good about that. LOL. I plan on making up for it tomorrow.
Elise – I love the tips and I feel like he’s talking to me. Think I see a sidewalk sale in my near future. BUt, hey, I’m getting words down. I’ll trim, enhance and move them about…um…next week.
I can sooooo imagine this potato salad scene!! Can’t wait to read it!
I am getting back on target but need to do some catching up. Must learn discipline! Too much time spent editing blogs and website instead of WIP! If it wasn’t for RRS I’d have no discipline at all!
Hope you feel better soon, Laurie.
I’m cracking the whip for you, Hywela Lyn! (Cracking the WIP??) Turn off that internet connection, and get down to work!! (Was that stern enough for you?)
Elisa,
Cracking the WIP…I LOVE that.
I’m struggling to keep moving the past few days and am very much looking forward to Hope’s column on Optimism…I need a little bit o’ that. Hmmm, maybe I can find a tiny Norman Vincent Peale to keep in my pocket…Okay, now I sound a little crazy…better go…