I don’t know, it seems like kind of a silly thing to blog about; but this is my writer blog and my writer news is, I’ve been writing. Yay!
Editing Arthur
For the ten weeks or so from the beginning of April to about mid-June, I was extensively overhauling my Arthurian retelling. I cut sections more heartlessly than I have ever cut sections before. When I cut long passages, I saved them in a “deleted scraps” file. That file is now 15,000 words long. I also rewrote some sections, and filled in some gaps in the story. Oddly, having cut 15,000 words, the story was only about 500 words shorter… And subsequent edits have added another 5k words or so, rather than shorten the MS. So, I guess this is meant to be a long story.
Many thanks to my fabulous beta readers, who gave me the feedback that motivates the editing!
Writing Greek Myths
In late June I switched gears, and began a detailed outline for the remaining sections of my Greek myths retelling. Then I participated in “Camp NaNoWriMo” during the month of July, and hammered out some 34,000 words by the end of the month. I have continued to work on this as my primary writing project. It is now 127,600 words long, meaning it has roughly doubled in size in the past 6 months. For some of my Twitter peers that would be really slow, but I count myself among the #turtlewriters, winky face.
Current Status
When I'm not snarking on Twitter I #amediting two WIPs. I just printed them both out. pic.twitter.com/84O99XVrB4
— Jesse S. Smith, Author (@JesseSmithBooks) September 30, 2017
Looking to the Future
So there’s this…
Had insomnia last night, but at least I planned an entire series, a dozen books long.
— Jesse S. Smith, Author (@JesseSmithBooks) October 6, 2017
Yes, I am always hatching more and more grandiose plans. And I generally try to pursue them! Very, very slowly.
Oh, and an admission:
My writing superpower is violating the principle of "show, don't tell."
— Jesse S. Smith, Author (@JesseSmithBooks) October 5, 2017
Don’t tell anybody, lol.
Adverbs
Before I let you go, I’d like to say a word about adverbs.
With apologies to Stephen King, I just can't imagine sentences without adverbs to modify "said."
— Jesse S. Smith, Author (@JesseSmithBooks) March 1, 2017
He strode briskly up the steps, and proudly turned to boldly address the skeptical scholars. #saveTheAdverbs
— Jesse S. Smith, Author (@JesseSmithBooks) May 12, 2017
Aaaaaaand that’s probably about enough from me! Have a great day y’all.
Photo credit: BRUNO CERVERA on Unsplash
