My Progress

It's been a while since I posted about my writing progress. Here's the latest ...

Well, it only took me 8 weeks to finish Lesson 1 in my revision course. Eight weeks? Yep, eight weeks. Life interuptions (the holidays, family visits, daily life, new books to read) made it difficult to always get in my 2-3 hours a day to work on the revision. Eventually I got through it with pen, pencil, lots of worksheets and even more determination. But, man, that first lesson was a killer!

Now I'm working on Lesson 5, which is all about identifying conflict in each of my scenes. Or finding out that I have no conflict in the scene; found quite a bit of those yesterday. On scene 55, only 200+ to go. Wonder how long I'll be working this lesson? Any bets?

At this point I am only seven lessons behind with lots of completed worksheets but little new work. Everything so far has been about identifying broken and weak spots in my manuscript. I'm also supposed to find strong points, but me being me, I've focused on the bad stuff and everything else just seems ok.

No beast slaying yet, but lots of looking at my beast from different angles to find broken bones, blemishes, missing scales, grime and strange behavior. Through this process of looking at her, really getting to know who she is, I realize I don't want to kill this awkward beast. Every once in a while, I spy her potential through the mud and blemishes.

Hope and excitement are welling up again, making it bareable to review, yet again, each scene and jot notes for possible fixes. Fixes that will make my beast shiny, healthy and beautiful. In my mind, I imagine my beast looking like Saphira from Eragon ... sleek, beautiful, smart, engaging, but with attitude.

Until then, I'm off for more observations of my beast. Hope she doesn't breathe fire ... at least not in my direction.