Ask and you shall receive.
If you have a question that you’d like me to answer, about writing, editing, or the publishing process, I can either answer you on my own or reach out to the experts. Email me at morgan.s.hazelwood@gmail.com
To celebrate 13 weeks of winter, Hàlön Chronicles will be conducting one interview a week for 13 weeks. Join us on the hashtag #13Winterviews, or check out our right-side blog hop to sneak a peek at all the wonderful authors and artists I’ll be interviewing in the coming weeks. Hosted by: K. J. Harrowick Without…
via Winterview with Author Morgan Hazelwood — Daily Cup o’ Coffee
In which crazy, determined, and optimistic writers aim to write 50,000 words, or 200 pages in the 30 days of November.
I’ve only won once, but friends and friends of friends who are trying keep asking me for advice, so here you go:
Sometimes you’re writing and your realize you’re droning on and on about the bookshelf and the sky and the weather.
You know your story won’t need that, so you start to delete it.
Stop! Write it anyway.
All that “unneeded” backstory is for YOU. Write it so you can figure it out. You can always edit it later, AFTER you’ve finished the book.
And maybe all that description will end up being used, sprinkled throughout the book sparingly.
Every word you write,
every word you edit
is one word closer to a finished novel.
P.S. Support my sprint on the 12th, or sign up to help yourself. I’m raising money for Syria Relief.
I always wanted to be a writer when I was a kid. I had teachers who encouraged it, parents who fed my love of books, and my mother even sprang for me to take some writing classes by mail when I was a teen.
![IMG_20151203_102351708[1]](https://morganshazelwood.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/img_20151203_1023517081-e1449156942369.jpg?w=359&h=602)
This past weekend, I was wandering around Old Town Manassas, in Virginia, looking for dessert when I peeked in Grounds Central Station, a cute, independently owned coffee shop.
Two young men manned the coffee bar, while the back half was full. Tables were pushed together, to make a long table with a microphone on one end. A well-dressed middle-aged man talked, his booming voice and steady tones were reminiscent of a sermon. I turned to the baristas and asked,
“Is this a Bible study?”
“Poetry reading.”
I picked out my dessert and waited patiently, listening in as the speaker finished and a new one began. But, to my ear, it was prose, not poetry that I heard.
At the end of the counter sat several pamphlets. The one nearest me was from Write By The Rails, the Prince William Chapter of the Virginia Writer’s Club. In it, it told me that tonight, a 4th Friday, was Open Mic Night and Saturday afternoons from 2-4pm were write-ins. I assume the barista explained it as a poetry reading because it was faster. Everyone knows what a poetry reading is.
I’ve done NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), but I’ve never done a Writer’s Group. I’ve seen some writers swear by theirs, while others turn catty or stagnant.
Should I stick with my beta readers? Join this group? Or try and custom build my own private writing group?
What would you do?
One Year Ago, Monday, I finished my rough draft.
(Or at least put down my pencil and stopped)
When you sit down to write a novel, the novel seems like the biggest thing ever. You have an idea, maybe even a plan on how it’s going to happen. But there’s over 100,000 words between you and it.
Everyone writes differently. I found word count was a good way to keep my progress going. Even if I didn’t feel like it, I would push through and get my words for the day done, knowing I could edit it later. Starting with 1,333 words per day for my kick-off month of NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month).
The goal for NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words. It’s a great start and there’s a supportive community of people all writing towards the same goal. (A standard YA (Young Adult) novel is 50,000-80,000 words. A standard fantasy novel is 80,000-120,000 words.) After taking December off, I lowered my goal to 10,000 words per month. 2,300 words a week is a much more sedate pace, and let me have a life outside of writing. A little reading, a bit of the gym, the ability to see my friends and family.
And I made it. I finished my novel after 10 months. 9, if you recognize that I took December off.
Yet, here it is, a year later and I’m STILL editing. It sometimes feel like I’ll never be done. Editing is harder to quantify, deciding when you are done is arbitrary. Like recognizing the obscene, you know it when you see it. Or, when you just can’t look at your novel any longer.
I’ve done a lot, I’ve taken a few months off to let beta readers review my work. I’ve tentatively started a sequel twice (although, as I’ve been changing the novel and the ending, the sequel is more of an idea that will need rework than a solid concept at this point.)
In my day job, I’m a programmer, we often start counting at 0. So, my drafts are labelled thus:
0 – Rough Draft (1 year and 1 day old)
1 – 1st Draft (I read through and made sure it was coherent.)
2 – 2nd Draft (I added revisions from my 1st round of beta readers, as appropriate. And rewrote the ending.)
3 – 3rd Draft (Major word count cuts, revisions from a new beta reader)
But, my newest beta reader only read the first third of the novel. So, once I finish this revision draft, I’ll be sending back out to willing beta readers, to see what they think of the edits. I imagine there will be a 4th round of edits from there.
And then?
Depends on how large the edits from that are. It will be either time for a copy-editor (sentence structure, punctuation, etc) or time to start submitting the novel to agents and publishers.
Am I done yet? Now? How about now?!
