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#illustration #wip for #mograph #animation- Space themed!

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©the enchanted easel 2015

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WIP

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©the enchanted easel 2014

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--> I'm sapped. By election results, doctors' ignorance about strange pains that I might go half-Stephen-Hawking about, and from not having gotten really drunk in over a month.

What the children would create in Anahuac

Non-Diné image of Diné entity

What Chaneco tumbled down

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 Near Done  Pulling in more blue and less muddy colors. Working out the light issues.   Light value study that I used in the piece. Started with a Pencil drawing.

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I am currently writing my seventh novel. I have published one novel for adults and three Y.A. and I have one book not yet taken and one which is just about to be submitted. But as Sue Gee, award winning author and Faber Academy tutor once said, "All writers are apprentices all their lives." So this blogpost is about my editing process with my Kindle as a relatively new and developing tool to help me.

Recently someone recommended Rachel Aaron's short ( and cheap £0.77) e-book and I decided to download it and see what there was on offer. I wasn't particularly interested in writing 10,000 words a day but I am always open to new ideas for the editing process.
The one idea I took away from this book was Aaron's recommendation to download your finished manuscript onto your Kindle and read it.
Why?
Because when you read a manu on a Kindle you read it like a reader.




I loved it! I was working on my new book, Behind Closed Doors, (BCD), about two teenage girls who are at risk of becoming homeless, for very different reasons. I downloaded the book, took my Kindle into the living room and sat down on the sofa which is where I read at least half of my books. I was in complete reader mode. This is such a different experience to either reading on the screen - my least favourite way to edit an entire book - or to printing a hard copy of the entire manu. With the hard copy I am much less relaxed. I sit there, pen in hand, scribbling all over the place and I am definitely not reading like a reader.

But sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea and a biscuit, nice and relaxed, each page appearing like a page in a printed book in that pleasing rectangular screen my brain was completely in reader mode. I read the book over a couple of days and then I put it to one side, went out for a long walk came back and wrote a couple of pages of notes by hand and with a nice clear head.

Ok - SNAP! You already do all this, I can hear you say and yes, I would think nowadays, a lot of writers do the same thing.

But then I had a new revelation. I went back to the computer, continued working on my book and finally sent the finished manu to my agent. All done and dusted, feeling pleased, etc.
Couple of weeks later I decide to download and read the manu again.
Groan! Suddenly I see loads of copy edits ( houses instead of house) - not earth shattering, I know, but I am beginning to realise that my Kindle edits could have been so much more.

However, after some feedback from an interested editor, it was decided to alter the last few chapters before widespread submission. This is my chance I think.
I rewrite the chapters - very satisfying job. Then I download onto my Kindle.
But this time I sit at my computer with the manu up on the screen.
I start at the beginning, chapter by chapter and every time I spot the error on my Kindle ( errors I have failed to see on the screen because I'm not reading like a reader and I seem to be much sharper in that role) I scroll down and correct it on the screen.
I catch all those pesky errors ( houses instead of house), feel I have a much cleaner text and press SEND in a much happier mood than before.


When I considered trying out this method I thought it would feel laborious and annoying.
In fact, I found it to be smooth and extremely satisfying.

From now on, I will be downloading in 10 chapter chunks ( I've just done that for the new WIP), reading on my sofa, making notes when I've finished and then working the Kindle and the screen version at the same time to build up to the much more perfected finished product.

Do you have an editing tip you'd like to share?

www.miriamhalahmy.com

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Some sketches for my current project.

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Step one: Finish the sketch. 

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Each month my fifth grader’s class gets a “big project”. Last month it was to write a poem. A rhyming poem. And, as luck would have it, my son’s topic was squirrels. Nothing rhymes with squirrel. Have you ever tried to pull a poem about squirrels that rhymes and makes some sense from the brain of a ten year old? It’s safe to say no one was happy during this project: my son, my husband, me…I think even the dog ran away to hide around the third stanza. But somehow he managed to create eight lines for his first – and I was pretty sure his last – attempt at being a poet.

Until last week. He was working on this month’s project when he looked up at me and out of the blue said,

“The squirrel jumped in an acorn pile,
And looked at me with a great big smile.”

“What?”

“For my squirrel poem. It just popped into my head. Wouldn’t that be great?”

My son is living proof of a writing belief I’ve always held –that you should never be working on just one project. If you spend all your writing time musing on one WIP you can become overwhelmed. Going over the same problems or weaknesses in the piece, in the same way, it seems almost impossible to find solutions or new ideas. the answer isn't to toil away until you puzzle out the solution. The answer is to start another project!

If you’re working on two projects, many time as you work on one an idea for the other will pop into your head. Trust me, it’s happened to me (and apparently my son). I believe that even when you’re totally focused on something some small part of your brain is still working on the other piece. Strangely enough, this phenomenon work best for me the more divergent the two pieces are: a humorous essay and a dramatic scene in my novel or an article and a children’s story. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon have even done studies on the subconscious continuing to work on one problem while occupied by another totally unrelated problem. So it’s official – never stick to just one WIP!

Have you ever found the perfect snippet of dialogue or essay ending while working on another piece?

Jodi Webb is still toiling away at her writing in between a full-time job, a full-time family and work as a blog tour manager for WOW-Women on Writing. Right now she's looking for blogs to promote Sue William Silverman's memoir The Pat Boone Fan Club and Barbara Barth's debut novel The Danger with Words. You can contact her at [email protected]. For Jodi's take on reading and writing (no 'rithmetic please!) stop by her blog Words by Webb.

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I've started work on the first draft of A Dinosaur Ate my Homework - the second book in my middle grade time travel adventure series. It's going well so far, though between preparing college lessons and finishing the third Snowy adventure, the going is slow.

Here's a little snippet from what I wrote today:

    For one glorious moment, I knew it couldn’t be real.
    The Sentinel’s defense system enhances subliminal fear in anything that gets too close. Sure, in my nightmares, the dinosaurs don’t usually come within drooling distance, but it wouldn’t be the first time a ship-triggered illusion scared the crap out of me.
   My relief lasted as long as it took for the T-Rex to exhale.

How about you?

Care to share a line or two from your current WiP?

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