No, I’m not blogging about a TV show. I’m celebrating finishing my edits for WHERE SHE BELONGS (Five Star Expressions, Dec. 2011). A few things I learned through the editing process:

• My characters smile and laugh and chuckle too much in this manuscript. I could not see this until my editor pointed it out. She axed a bunch of smiles, and I axed more after axing hers.
• I overuse ellipses…and why not? I love ellipses! But my Five Star/Cengage editor isn’t the first editor to point out my overuse of the dot-dot-dot. Penny’s last editor for Red Sage Secrets caught me on it, too. To me, ellipses are a stylistic technique, but I can see how too many ellipses can…slow down the pacing (I had to think about that, thus the ellipses). I don’t think I STET’ed any ellipses that my editor took out (she replaced them with commas or dashes). My problem is, I need the editorial eye to point out which ellipses should stay and which should go. I’m too close to the characters and the story. Because I know I’m too close to the story, I didn’t “accept all changes” (using Track Changes in Word) and then read the manuscript to see what screamed “Clunk!” Instead, I went through each and every change, a learning experience.
• I overuse italics…and why not? I love my italics! I love my italics sooooooo much! I love my freaking italics! I do know I’m not alone in overusing italics. You see, Penny’s last Red Sage Secrets editor caught me on them, too, but assured me that I overuse italics less than other authors. So there. That my Five Star/Cengage editor and my Secrets editor both caught me on my two biggest faux pas…I realized something. They both must be right! So, yes, alack, alas, amiss, I agreed with 95% of my Five Star/Cengage editor’s corrections.
• I overuse “then.” This is the first editor who’s ever pointed that out to me, so maybe it’s a stylistic/house thing. You know, those sentences, “I did this, and then I did that.” Or “I did this, this, then that happened.” My Five Star/Cengage editor prefers another “and” to “then.” Or starting a new sentence. Okie-doke, I’m easy-peasy.

Other than that, I rocked! No revisions, just the edits. I was pretty happy.

After going through my editor’s edits, though, I couldn’t help but notice other things popping out at me that I’d never noticed before with this manuscript. So I went ahead and fixed them.

• I overuse “just.” I’d love to justify my overuse of “just,” but I’m afraid I…I just can’t. I took out all the extraneous justs and just left the ones that just had to be there.
• I gave two extremely minor characters, one who isn’t even seen on the page, similar names—Ellen and Elaine. I did not see this before re-reading the manuscript five times in one week. So Elaine is now Louisa.

Realizing that I’m too close to my manuscripts is a reason I’m hesitant to go the self-Kindle/”indie” route at this point in time. If I ever did go that route, I’d want to hire a copy editor to go over my manuscript first. We think we’ve caught every error, we think our critique partners or beta readers might point out overuse-age, etc., but, frankly, critique partners and beta readers, IMO, should read more for story. A good editor who has never looked at the manuscript before, who hasn’t brainstormed story elements with you, is the person who will catch little ditties like my Five Star/Cengage editor caught for me. Plus, that she liked the story feels great. I’d love to work with her again.

What are your editing bugaboos?

Well, middle-aged writer is more accurate. I’m not 103 yet!

I have made a transition in my writing life that I never thought I would accomplish. I have :::gasp!::: finally begun typing in black font on a white screen. It’s almost like typing on white paper. Amazing. Why didn’t I think of this before?

Back in the Blue Ages, when WordPerfect was the word processing program of choice, I became used to typing white font onto a blue screen. One day My Liege came home from work and announced that his employer had converted to this strange new program called Word. We were getting a new computer, and he didn’t want to have to know how to work two word processing programs (plus, back in the Blue Ages the hard drive on our computer was so small that it didn’t have room for two word processing programs). So it was decided that we were moving to Word. I wailed, I gnashed my teeth, I believe I even pulled out some of his hair. I LOVED WordPerfect. For a writer, it’s amazingly simple compared to Word. The Reveal Codes alone was enough to keep me committed to WordPerfect for life.

However, then I learned that not only had my husband’s employer moved to Word, but Word was the program of choice pretty much across the publishing industry. Teeth ground down to gums, I made the transition. But one thing I refused to give up was typing in white font on a blue screen. Typing in black on a white screen hurt my eyes. Plus, it didn’t look pretty. It looked business-like, not creative. It stunk.

Lo and behold, Word has a “white font on blue screen” option for those of who were dragged kicking and screaming away from WordPerfect. I used that option religiously until this year.

Two things happened. (1) My eyes are older and weaker than they used to be, so suddenly the black font on white screen doesn’t seem so harsh; and (2) as my frequent blog readers know, my desktop died. I had a full manuscript request, so I was forced to work on My Liege’s and Youngest Son’s laptops. They both type black on white. Afeared of screwing up their laptops somehow, and noting that the laptop screen wasn’t as big (and therefore not as blinding) as my 19-inch desktop LCD monitor, and rationalizing that I was only editing not creating, I boldy went where my fingers had not gone before and typed black on white. And after a few days it wasn’t that bad.

Then the weirdest thing happened. I loaded Word onto my new desktop, opened a document, cursed that the default was once again black on white, went into the options panel and changed it to white on blue, then…decided the blue screen was too bright. Yes, finally, finally, after all these years, I have made the conversion. It will be interesting to see if it sticks. Having submitted that requested full manuscript, I am now returning to revisions on my single title. Revisions I can manage typing black on white. I do most of my revising with pen and ink, anyway. But when I finish those revisions and finally start crafting a new story, that will be the real test.

Have you forced yourself to learn new writer tricks? The other biggie for me was going from two spaces after a period to one. When I finally decided to make the move, it only took my fingers three or four days to become accustomed to not typing that extra space. I thought it would take forever. Not so.

Maybe there’s hope for me with the tiny keyboard on my new netbook, after all. It’s replacing my old AlphaSmart, and if I could type on that, I should be able to type on the netbook keyboard. But I did order a mouse to go with, and I can’t wait until it arrives. I still absolutely abhor touchpads. Maybe someday I’ll get used to them..but not now.

I’m reading a novel right now that’s the first in a series, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out for the longest time what was bugging me about this book. It’s a new-to-me author and the cover is intriguing, so I was really looking forward to the read. But although the author has a good voice and knows how to string her sentences together and has a knack for scene endings, the book isn’t…moving for me. This is when I realized that the pacing suffers in this story. I’m at the halfway point, and I feel like it should have occurred 25% through the book instead of 50% through. I’ve read a lot of what feels like filler, including flashbacks I am finding completely unnecessary (and in fact wonder if an editor asked for them to be included, so clearly do they point to their intention) that then lead up to a great scene ending compelling me to read on…and then my interest lags again until the next scene ending that piques my interest.

My obsession with the pacing of this novel got me to thinking about trends in publishing and how, when a trend in writing is hot and especially if there’s an author out there currently making a killing off this trend (because they broke the ground) and publishers want to cash in, well, sometimes novels are bought that wouldn’t otherwise get bought. I’m not familiar enough with this author’s sub-genre that I can comment on whether or not I feel this book should have been bought. Publishing is subjective, after all. But the big feeling I do have from reading this book is that, okay, just because your novel is the first in a series featuring the same characters does not mean it’s okay to take up the entire first book  ”introducing” the characters and their world. Because that’s what this book feels like to me. Like the author knew full well going in that the hero and heroine’s relationship would continue in Book 2, and thus the slow build-up. The VERY slow build-up. The completely avoidable very slow build-up. It’s driving me nuts. And yet I’m continuing to read just so I can find out, when I finish the book, if pacing really is the issue with this book…or it’s my limited attention span.

Author Kylie Brant (who guest-blogged here not too long ago) is hosting a cool contest on her website this month. Here are the deets, peeps (in Kylie’s words, hence the quote block…)

For the November contest we’re doing something a bit different. Have you ever wanted to have an in-depth conversation with a multi-published author about your manuscript, plot idea, getting an agent, publishing houses, etc? MENTORING MANIA with Kylie Brant offers multiple chances to win an intensive mentoring opportunity of your choice—a thirty minute phone conversation or a 24 hour email exchange.

The contest runs from November 2–November 27. The grand prize winner will be announced on my website by Tuesday, December 1. You can be entered multiple times, according to the number of points you earn. Here’s how you earn points:

1 point for sending me a short paragraph on why you need a mentoring opportunity. What writing hurdle to you need help with?

1 point for subscribing to my newsletter.

1 point for mentioning the contest with url on any social network (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc. One point per site.)

1 point for becoming a Facebook fan of Kylie Brant

5 points for posting a paragraph about my current series, The Mindhunters and the contest in a blog post.

Visit Kylie’s website for more information.

It’s NaNoWriMo time! (National Novel Writing Month for those not in the know). I’m not NaNo’ing this year. In fact, I’ve only done participated once. It was fun, but I’m deep into revisions on the first of two manuscripts. No time to NaNo. Yano?

Are you NaNo’ing? Why or why not? If you are participating this year, what are you working on? Did you honestly not write a word of your manuscript before November 1st? Just planned? Or have you tweaked the NaNo write-50K-in-one-month-without-editing parameters to suit your personal creative process? I wouldn’t blame you if you have.

It’s the first week. Four to go. Good luck!

Enough planning the revisions for my single title. I’ve finally dug into them, and I’m loving the results.

Five pages down, 315 to go!

I am obsessed with research. Well, I’m not obsessed in the sense that I love to research. No, I’m obsessed in the sense that once I’ve started researching, I can’t stop.

It’s a disease, I swear.

A few weeks ago, a Canadian writer friend and I brainstormed revisions for the single title I finished this summer. We came up with a fantastic way to deepen the heroine’s GMC. I passed the brainwave by another Canadian writer. She gave it glowing reviews.

This week I began researching. My first step was to post questions to a couple of writers’ listservs. I’m very glad I did, because the American members alerted me to a whole host of issues I hadn’t considered. On the other hand, their replies sent me back to the Land of Research. A land that, all too often in my case, develops into a bog. I experience a great deal of difficulty digging my way out. There’s just so damn much to learn! And if there’s one thing my mind loves, it’s information. Even the useless bits.

My characters in this story are American. I am not. And the revisions to my heroine’s GMC involve the American medical/health insurance system. Every time I think I’ve hit upon a way to make the brainwave work, I smash into another roadblock. Now, I do believe the revisions can work. They will work. If I would put half the energy into reading the articles I’ve printed off the Internet as I have into scrounging for them, I’m sure I would come across the perfect solution. But every time I read another article, I feel a compelling need to hit the Internet again. Just in case, you know, I missed something the first trillion times.

All I can say is, it’s a good thing I don’t write historicals.

Are you a research hound? Do you have binders filled with articles you’ll probably never use? Do you feel the need to read 30 news stories when 3 or 5 will probably do? How do you stop the madness?

My buddy HelenKay Dimon doesn’t believe in the concept of a muse. Poor thing. What, nowhere to lay the blame for a lack of productivity? No one to thank for a fantastic day of writing?

I can not fathom it.

I believe in the muse. My muse. Elle Muse. But I’m in charge, she isn’t. Sometimes it feels like she’s in charge, but that’s a cop-out. I’m in charge. She can kick me in the keister, but honestly she only does that when I’m not taking proper control like I should. When I’m not putting her to work. Because she’s lazy, you see, and she won’t work unless I order her to.

I don’t believe in the muse in the way that I can’t write unless “she” visits me. Like some magical outside force. I believe in the muse the way I believe in my creative subconscious. My muse IS my creative subconscious. And my creative subconscious will laze about if I allow it to.

Years ago, I had a tape from some RWA conference workshop or another that instructed one how to do relaxation exercises, how to visualize an aspect of your creativity so you could learn to channel it, to make it do your bidding. I used to listen to this tape every day before sitting down to write. Then it became second nature. Now, if I’m having trouble with a scene, I do the nighttime exercise. I lie in bed and visualize my muse. Or, more accurately, I visualize a certain body part—her hand. I visualize handing her a piece of paper. On this piece of paper, I’ve written my story problem. I tell to fix it. I tell her, “When I wake up tomorrow morning, this story issue WILL be solved, or, in the immoral words of Donald Trump, ‘You’re Fired.’” (Well, I don’t actually say the last part; I might scare her off). Then I visualize my muse (the hand of my muse…kind of like something from the Addam’s Family, but with a great manicure), feeding a blank piece of paper into an old IBM Selectric typewriter. No computers allowed. Don’t ask me why. Okay, go ahead. Why a typewriter? Because my muse is really myself, during my first pregnancy. She’s about three months pregnant, and she’s wearing a blue-and-white pinstriped skirt with a white knit top. I remember this outfit very clearly, because I worked in a correctional facility, and I needed to have my photo taken for a badge and pledge homage to the Queen (in much the same way my muse pays homage to me). And I happened to type on an IBM Selectric typewriter at this time.

Why is my muse me during my first pregnancy? Because I happen to believe that creating a life and creating a story are both worthwhile creative endeavors. Weird, maybe, but there you have it.

Now, I know all these details about my muse, but I don’t visualize anything other than her hand. Feeding the blank sheet of paper into the typewriter. Then she begins typing, and I fall asleep.

Oddly enough, I’d say about 7 times out of 10 I wake up the next morning with the story problem solved. I might not remember that I gave my muse instructions. I might just sit down at my desk to write. And then suddenly a great idea will pop into my head, and I remember—I put Elle Muse to work. And she delivered.

Good girl. Have a piece of chocolate. Oh, you can’t eat it, because you’re  a figment of my imagination? No problem. I’ll eat it for you.

I might make it sound easy. Give her a problem, she solves it. It’s not easy at all. Often I walk around for two or three days in a snit about my story problem before remembering to visualize giving it to her to work on. Once I consciously put her to work, though, that’s when great things begin to happen.

I wish I could remember the name of that tape, or the name of the presenter, so I could give them due credit. Alas, it was so long ago that I listened to the tape or workshop, that I don’t have a clue. But it works for me.

What works for you? Do you believe in the muse? Do you have one? Go ahead, share. But be warned. My muse can beat up your muse any day of the month. Excerpt every third Thursday. That’s her day off.