Tag: wednesdaywords

Wednesday Words 5/17

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 2 Comments

With the editing of others: Blissfully not editing much right now. A little word smithing on the website. A few paragraphs rewritten for the hubs and friends. But that’s it; which is probably why….

With my own writing: I am editing like a maniac. LOL. It’s weird really diving into my spy novel because some of it was written 4 1/2 years ago. It was my first novel and it reads like it. I spend some serious time rewriting crutched sentences. LOL. I’ve edited to a happy place, 2 chapters this week.

Emotionally: I’m on the fence about this writing conference coming in October. Registration opens soon and I keep waffling back and forth between, just go and that’s a lot of money. Part of me knows I need to expand beyond Norwescon. It’s not my genre and I’ve gotten what I can there. I need to jump to a bigger pond. But I am a little afraid. New things make me nervous. LOL

Plus this conference offers the opportunity to sit down with agents and editors. I am both intrigued and horrified by this. Part of me thinks it would be super interesting just to see how the process might go and what they might say. And then part of me thinks, hello rejection.

Topic for debate on my writing: So as I clean things up, I find myself working hard to balance between removing crutch words and phrases and staying true to my voice.

What tricks and tips do you have for balancing this?

Wednesday Words #3

~ tahenryauthoress ~ Leave a comment

With the editing of others: Not editing a damn thing right now

With my own writing: Not writing a damn thing right now.

Emotionally: Ugh. This was the penultimate week of what I refer to as April-itis. My April swell to the size of three months every year. Since I posted WW last, I have cleaned my house, prepped personally and the coop for a Teacher Fair and Open House, held said event, shopped for house guests and parties, went to PTA convention, taught, had an allergic reaction(sneaky strawberries), cooked for and entertained inlaws, went back to convention, more cooking and entertaining, hosted brunch birthday party, site seeing in Seattle, more cooking and entertaining, Monday at coop combined with son’s birthday, cleaned, shopped, and made a lego brick ice cream cake. Today I will throw the party for my son’s friends and be done with April itis. Emotionally – I am spent. There’s nothing. It’s just exhaustion and the vague feeling I’m either eating too much sugar to cope or coming down with a cold.

Topic for debate on my writing: Local events as a writer or national impersonal advertising…

Right now I am the Local Spot Light Author at St. James Espresso in Kirkland. I will be all month. Last year, I participated in multiple local events. None of which got me much in the way of sales or traction, building word of mouth. But some would argue it takes years to build a local following and I should stick with it.

What do you think? Is it worth the time, energy, and money, not to mention opportunity cost to work local events or do you think authors should focus on the impersonal advertising campaigns of Amazon and Facebook, for example?

Wednesday Words #2

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 7 Comments

With the editing of others: I finally finished editing that 105K word fantasy novel and broke the sad news to the author that genre standard for a YA fantasy is 80K, with a 90K max. She didn’t cry. I was impressed. She did start sharpening her hatchet though. I am going to assume that was so she could slash her word count…

With my own writing: I haven’t written too many new words on my novel. I am however operating like I am a functioning author. LOL. I’m getting reviews, doing interviews, participating in promos.

Emotionally: Great question. I think what it comes down to for me is this. The idea of not writing makes me sadder than not being read. Eventually people will read will me. Or maybe they won’t. Maybe I will always have just over average book sales.  I think I can learn to live with that. Maybe.

Topic for debate on my writing: To serialize or Not?

I’m considering serializing my spy novel to my blog as opposed to publishing it. I have two reasons for doing this. A) I feel like it will give me a deadline on my editing. Gotta make my post. B) I get to short circuit the whole, I published and no one cared issue.

Would you serialize, self-publish, or traditional publish? Why?