Now I am back at my own piece and asking myself questions, like why? Why would my main character stick with this person? Do I need to explain that? What does she see in him? Since this is just a snapshot, should I leave people wondering and asking themselves the same question? Does it just seem like she’s whiny and weak, or does she have any kind of resolve in her? Do I want my readers to like her or hate her?

This process is maddening. Every time I think, okay this is the best it can be and maybe I should just save it and email it to the submission site, I read it again, and see more things I could probably change. Grrrr. I need to leave it alone for a bit again.

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Update: More editing, reading through, perfecting. And I joined Protagonize, a community of writers who sometimes collaborate on works but most importantly read and offer critique. Sometimes I need to hear from people who don’t know me and aren’t obligated to be nice. Though it’s nice to get that pat on the back from my friends, too. I’m sure I’ll open myself up to a few of those.

I’ve posted the current draft at Protagonize here.

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I’ve been doing some editing this morning on Calm Waves and Smooth Moon which has now been retitled ‘Try to Say No’.

I’m wondering if I need to add more to it… more reactions to what’s going on, more internal thoughts. It’s in 3rd person, pretty much from one perspective, so the reader gets a view into that character’s thought process.  I don’t like to write what I call ‘diary entries’. This happened and then that happened and then happened, the end’. I like to be introspective and bring elements out. At the same time I want the author to draw conclusions and not have to be told how the character feels.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

I also went for it with Autocrit. Got the basic package which lets me run a series of reports on things like overused words and phrases, cliches, repeated terms, sentence length variation. It was quite helpful. I’m learning that I am repetitive by nature. While I do it on purpose, overuse loads the story down– it’s just meant to carry a central theme, not be annoying. Autocrit directed me to get rid of as high as 42 occurrences of a word! It did help me think about the point I am trying to get across and try to use other words, more complex or simpler terms.

I think I am going to seek out a few people to read it and get some thoughts. Let it sit for awhile and look at it again. I’m not in any hurry, but sometimes I can overwork a piece and it turns out worse. I want to get it complete and submitted so I can stop messing with it.

It’s break time, here at the ranch! Back to writing later,

But YAY, because I was talking about AutoCrit on twitter the other night and they tweeted me back and gave me a discount code for 10% off of a subscription. Wow, the power of social networking, huh?

Huzzah!

Last night as I was tiptoe-ing through my Google Reader, I opened a post from a writer I’ve been following. She’s currently editing a book and sent out some queries and is trying to get published. She posted last night about a website that she found the is sort of an auto-editor. It looks out for things like cliche’s, overused words, sentence structure, all things I wouldn’t normally look at, when I’m editing. I’m always more concerned with does it make sense, do you care about my characters, are there any misspellings?

Well. WHOA, mama. The wesbite is called AutoCrit and it does some things I’ve never seen a website DO! This is, of course, not made for a rough draft or even first pass, but if you’re past the point of seeing your faults, this will definitely show you new ones!

I love constructive criticism (concrit). I want my pieces to read the best that they can and if people can see where there is a flaw, I want to fix it. I don’t want strangers pointing out my literary failures, if that makes any sense. So, even though I had just written the beginning of a new chapter in my (hopefully) novel, I plugged in the first 800 words and waited for the result. When it popped up, my eyes lit RIGHT UP.

Suddenly I was seeing things I hadn’t ever seen before. How many times I use certain words; whether or not I used too many -ly words (I rarely do) how many times I use ‘just’ (which I’ve been trying to get away from, but in an 800 word sample I used it 8 times! EIGHT! I feel like the clouds just parted and the sun came out. STUFF I CAN DO TO MAKE IT BETTER!

Of course, that’s only the free version, which limits you to five times a day at 800 words a pop. For shorter pieces, and if you’re only concerned about the basics, it’d do you fine. I’m salivating over the option to upload up to 100,000 words in that baby and have it spit out a report.

But first, I have to FFFFIIIINNNIIISSSHHHH IIITTTTT. GUH! I cannot seem to get going on this thing. I think I’m freaking myself out by thoughts that this might actually turn into a book. I waiver between thinking it’s really very good and I’m impressed with myself and then thinking it’s so dumb, no one will want to even look at it. Put it away and move on. No matter what, I don’t want my parents to know about this book. They are religious and it is…. It’s uhm. Explicit. Holy Gah… if my mom ever…*passes out*.

Hoookay. Well. Since I have a book to write, I am going to skiddadle and get to writing. I’ve written about 1000 words this weekend, which is completely underwhelming for me. I’ve found everything to do BUT write, and it shows.

Pen in hand,