Robynettely

“Writing the Breakout Novel” by Donald Maass. This talked me into my next editing project. It was sitting at the top of my pile for a while, but I moved it aside to read other things – you know, fiction. “The Practice” by John Grisham. I hated this book. I did not engage with any characters except the one who inexplicably did something inexplicable at the end. JG seems to dislike people in general. Donald Maass made a lot of references to this, and I had it lying around, and hadn’t read a proper novel in a little while, and I was curious. The story sure does move along. “Red Glove” by Holly Black . These are just as well-plotted as the Grisham book was, and with likeable characters. The magic system is really nicely worked out. Blowback is great. “Black Heart” by Holly Black. In real life, adults constantly tell teens that the choices they’re making will affect them for the rest of their lives, but then tell them that their emotions aren’t valid. YA fiction doesn’t h...

You know the ads that are targeted to you on websites? Sometimes I'll look at a yarn store, and then I'll get an ad for Webs. I've gotten ads for the world's most powerful commercially available laser, and for motorcycle pants. But the most frequent ad I get is for Zulily's "clothes for every size". I have nothing against clothes for every size. But, the only clothes I've ever bought online were a small t-shirt and a whole bunch of shoes, so I have no idea that Google AdSense or whoever decided I'm the target audience for that ad. It makes me sad.

First Draft “The Fruit of the Summer Tree.” Done. “This is the Church, and This is the Steeple.” A partly true story.   3000 words so far. Editing “Don’t Choose Astronaut”. One of the reasons I started editing short stories was that it seemed like it might be faster, a good way to get good at some skills that I could then use on the novels, once I had honed them. This has not turned out to be true. Now I'm thinking, is it really any faster to finish a short story than a novel? Does it scale? If it takes me a month to edit a 3000-word short story, would it then take me a year and a half to edit a 60,000-word novel? I don't think it would. Take “astronaut” as an example. It's a 3000-word short story. Writing the first draft, I did tons of world-building, creating characters, researching their "situation", inventing the science that goes around it. I think it's the part that doesn't scale. The actual writing and editing of the words s...