Words About Writing

Not my "style" in terms of voice, but style in terms of process. Does that make sense? I figured out months ago that I don't need to create a vacuum for myself. Setting a timer is fine, but if I do that, I set it long enough to include distractions. I am an interruptible writer.  If someone comes to talk to me while I'm writing, maybe I need to hold up a finger and finish a sentence or paragraph, but the short - or even lengthy - distraction doesn't pull me totally out of my fiction. Need a refill on my beverage? Not a problem, even if I spend a few minutes absorbed in whatever's on the TV. When I get back to my writing, my groove is waiting for me. I think I'm blessed that way. I can write with noise, with activity, with the TV blasting in the next room. Well, so far, anyway. Perhaps not completely unrelated is the fact that music matters when I write. I have spotify on my laptop ( not my favorite music app, but they have long playlists and it wor...

Somehow, for this book - which I imported into Scrivener into a basic novel format - Scrivener is not functioning as well as the one I wrote in the Nanowrimo novel configuration on Scrivener. My searches based on custom meta-data yielded no results ( this was a key way that I sorted my character arcs before leaving my Nano draft ) and the cork board... well... Not actually a Scrivener problem, but a learning curve for me. The cork board only works within each folder. So for future books, I will not divide into sections until after the entire draft is done.That way I can go to the cork board and move things around before sorting them into groups! If you don't use Scrivener, sorry for all the software details. I'm still getting used to it myself. Last week, I did make some major changes to two minor characters. Not exactly combining them into one, I gave one character's dominant characteristic to the other, who was better-suited to it, frankly, and modified the first to...

I finished the first revision a few days ago, and I don't think it's done. Clearly, the book isn't done, but I don't think the first revision is really done. I tackled the big things that jumped out at me in the reading, so I do have a 2nd draft. I once heard someone on the publishing end say not to send an editor anything earlier than a 5th draft, preferably 6th or 7th. Most online information I've seen says "three". I'm thinking that a lot of the "3 draft" people must combine revisions. My second draft is ready for me to go through it for more big stuff. I'm not sure about the storyline. The story is told in the order everything happens, but I think the secondary plot might be better split up and told at various times instead of as it happened in the timeline of the primary plot. For my second draft, then, I plan to go to the corkboard (in Scrivener) and play around with the order. See what sticks best. After I get that where I ...

Whew! Bought a printer last week. I had already hand-written enough to knock almost 20 pages off the print job, but what a relief to be able to print out the bulk of my manuscript. As of this morning, I have finished reading through the whole thing. The steps I am following for this first revision are: Write my original intention/goal for the first draft. Read the entire first draft (in a different format from how I entered it - handwritten and in print). Read it, stopping only for general, broad-stroke notes, not nitpicking. Write a synopsis of the story I just finished reading. Use the original intention, the notes, and the synopsis as a starting point for the second draft. Personally, after writing the synopsis, I re-read it, then highlighted bits of the synopsis that I think could be bigger plot points. Things that I recalled as I wrote the synopsis, but that seemed downplayed in the actual manuscript. Sidenote: The first step to this process that I followed seemed unne...

I'm at the point of revising the first draft of a book I wrote last summer. This was the first work of fiction I attempted, and it reads like it. Haha. That's why we edit. The problem is that I don't have a printer yet. I moved last summer, and gave my bulky, heavy printer to friends who had helped with the move. I don't need one often, so I thought I'd see how long I could go. For this first revision, I'm following advice of many writers, who suggest printing out the whole thing, re-reading it to familiarize yourself with the story - this is assuming it has been sitting on a back burner for a while - and then tackling major issues first. Well, I can't seem to find a print-shop in my new city that handles anything smaller than giant advertising banners. Also, every electronics store I've checked out seems to be focused more on TVs and cell-phones. I guess I need to track down how people get their computer needs met here. Maybe the computer places a...

I'm having some difficulty getting this website set up as I would like. There will be a profile photo, but the one I want to use is not Blogger friendly, apparently. I'll have to work on that. So, Hi! I'm Abigail Piet, and I write books. I have arranged my life so that my primary work is spent in writing and editing my current works in progress. (WIP) I'm working on getting published, but as we all know, it takes many rejections to get a book out into the world, so while I'm doing that, I thought it might be helpful - to myself, and maybe to others - to write about what is going on. I don't know how often I'll post here, but I do know that people who know me sometimes get tired of hearing about the process. Besides, among my near and dear ones are a few nay-sayers who don't believe any book will actually come out of me. Do you have people like that in your life? That's why this blog is up, and that's what I intend to do with it.