Why I’m Not Around
I’ve been a slug about blogging and the guilt has finally gotten to me, so here I am once again.
What have I been doing to keep me away? Revisions. Revisions, revisions, revisions. I am taking my current work-in-progress and revising the hell out of it. Well, some hell will stay in, but most of the hell - outta there. I’m looking at characterization (are my characters likeable? do they develop naturally-yet-surprisingly over the course of the story?), pacing (I tend to start too fast, I’m finding, and need to slow myself down to let readers enjoy the unfolding motivations and escalating conflict), description (those damned five senses, including, yes, smell, I’ll get smell in there if it kills me), the funny (it’s a romantic comedy, so both tone and plot must contain hints of insanity), the list goes on and on.
Written on sticky notes on my monitor right now:
EDGY
on the edge of being pissed off or thriled or excited or
EDGY
and
EVERYTHING HAS CHARACTER.
EVERYTHING IS CHARACTER.
The Edgy note is a reminder on tone and attitude for my main characters. The Character note reminds me to imbue my descriptions of secondary characters and inananimate objects (houses, rooms, cars, trees, everything) with character. So instead of describing a room as ‘cluttered’ I’d write something like ‘objects marched over every surface’… and then play off that metaphor to make the description of the room really a description of the owner of the room, the state of her mental health etc etc. Great in concept, but it didn’t come naturally in the first drafts and I’m going to have to go back and re-read umpteen bizillion times to catch all the meaningless descriptions I have scattered throughout my manuscript.
All of which is to say, WAAAA. I’ve been busy, and I’ve been lazy about updating my blog.
And I’d really like to tell y’all about my plans for the new year - my last day at my day job is February 1 - but that will have to be another post on another day. I’ve got revisions to do.
In early 2008 Michelle left a fulfilling career as interactive director in an integrated marketing agency to pursue her passion for writing great stories filled with fascinating, intense, real characters who will do anything necessary to achieve their dreams. She’s co-written the audio-play of a Louis L’Amour short story produced by Bantam and Beau L’Amour, worked as an executive assistant for a Hollywood publicist, taught English in Spain, and enjoyed the lofty title of Romance Director running the personals sections of a newsweekly in Los Angeles. She lives in Austin, Texas and spends her spare time adding poems to
I was wondering where you’d disappeared to! I can’t wait to hear your plans.
Last day at work? I haven’t spoken to you in forever and I’m wondering - are you going to be a full-time writer? That would be so cool. I can see it now: you in the summer, lounging by the pool, choosing each word with careful precision, developing an off-beat and interesting writing persona so you can wear strange hats at conference; you in winter, curling up on the sofa, cuddling your laptop, spinning wacky adventures for quirky characters. Or are you just getting a new job? Because that sucks more than full-time writer gal.