Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Opening my mind

I'm integrating all the suggestions from the line edit into my manuscript - accepting or rejecting them paragraph by paragraph. It's a slow process and somewhat tedious, but very educational.
I already see a pattern of punctuation and word usage that keeps my manuscript from flowing in some places. Some of the changes I reject because they change the meaning or they take events out of their proper context. Most of them make sense.

When the line by line work is done, I'll read it through once in her suggested order to see if it works for me. She's a published author and knows the memoir genre. She says the in thing these days is non-chronological memoirs. I understand what she's trying to accomplish, but my initial feeling is the sequence has been chopped up into too many parts. I know it's up to me to make the parts work together and establish the flow between the sections.

My life happened in chronological order. It's difficult to consider presenting it any other way. Making it all work will be a true test of my creativity and my writing ability.

I'm trying to keep an open mind!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey there, it sounds like you have a nice relationship in your author friend. It's hard to decide what criticism to accept and what to reject. Just make the changes and see how it feels. At least we have the benefit of computer cutting and pasting. Can you imagine doing this by typewriter? What words stop your flow? I always include "just" too much and have to check for that. Also, I check for passive voice. Hang in there. Sounds like you're making great progress.

Anonymous said...

Oh sorry to have taken so long, but I finally got back to the blogroll on my site! Keep at work on your book.

The Anti-Wife said...

Words: just, really, that, of, so.

Passive voice is a fight for me too.

Thank dog for computers! I have 2 Word docs open - the original draft and her suggestions. I'm correcting and inserting into both as I go. When that's finished I'll read through hers to see if I can live with the revised order.

This is incredibly tedious, but a tremendous learning experience. I am making progress, but never fast enough for timetable!