{"id":451,"date":"2009-07-26T11:32:09","date_gmt":"2009-07-26T18:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=451"},"modified":"2025-11-08T09:08:28","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T16:08:28","slug":"writing-102","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=451","title":{"rendered":"Writing 102"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a beginning writer I’m learning my craft.\u00a0 And I’m learning how I use or work my craft.\u00a0 Apparently I write every little itty bitty bit down, writing minute to minute real time for my characters.\u00a0 Only occasionally lumping action into a paragraph.\u00a0 Its how my first novel Cat, ended up 151,000 words when it should have been closer to 90,000.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

So just as I honed some of my beginning talent with Fan Fic, now I’m learning to tighten sentences and dump excess scenes, lines, dialogue, etc.\u00a0\u00a0 I always knew I was long-winded, but sheesh!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Cutting Cat was pretty easy at first, but my writing got better as I wrote it and now it’s much harder to discard sentences or condense entire paragraphs into one sentence.\u00a0 I have noticed I tend to write my sentences like this.\u00a0 I did this and then did this.\u00a0 Which I can lose a word by saying, Doing this, I did this.\u00a0 So when I get to the end of this editing run I get to search every “and” in the book and see what else I can do.\u00a0 Then start again with the word “that” which was a suggestion I got from a writer at LOSCON last year.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

After that its another round of reading out loud.\u00a0 Won’t my neighbors just love me, because I can’t do that in the house with the kids!\u00a0 And its very hard to read aloud all day.\u00a0 I get hoarse!\u00a0 But it does help in catching some of the rhythm mistakes and odd word choices.\u00a0 Maybe they’ll still take it if its 99,000 words because I only have 10 chapters left, 55 pages and I’m still at 122,500 words.\u00a0 Sigh, I may have to cut Austin’s testing scene.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Luckily Cat 2 which is Sarah’s story is only 123,000 words but if my writing has gotten better then cutting it will be harder.\u00a0 Maybe Cat will do well enough that they’ll accept Sarah’s size.\u00a0\u00a0 And I just realized Cat 3 could either be short… i.e. only the outline I’ve done or it could be long… i.e what I’ve done and what comes next.\u00a0 But Cat 3 must wait her turn and by then I’ll know more about just how long she can or cannot be.\u00a0 Plus, who knows where I’ll be in my craft by then!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The two people who’ve read both Cat and Sarah have remarked at how much better Sarah is as a book than Cat.\u00a0 I’ll admit she was easier because its more a straight relationship romance than what I’d set out to do with Cat.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I think I’m getting this writing stuff down.\u00a0 And it’s fascinating learning something new in this “journey of my craft”.\u00a0 The most eye opening part is realizing how much I judge a new author by that first book.\u00a0 And the first book isn’t ever the best of an author’s career!\u00a0\u00a0 Wow.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a beginning writer I’m learning my craft.\u00a0 And I’m learning how I use or work my craft.\u00a0 Apparently I write every little itty bitty bit down, writing minute to minute real time for my characters.\u00a0 Only occasionally lumping action … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=451"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3437,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions\/3437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}