Drafts, Editing, and Weaknesses--Oh My!

>> Sunday, January 20, 2008

Well, today I typed up my rough draft of that short story. I'll begin editing it tomorrow, but I can see already that I need to add some more description here and there. The middle is kind of narrative-heavy in some ways, although with what little dialogue and action takes place between the characters, I think I captured the emotion pretty well during the middle of the piece. I just need to work on my description and expand upon things a bit. Description has always been a weak area of my writing.

It's not that I can't do it, mind you. It's that it takes work, for me. See, my problem with description is that I get so caught up in the plot, dialogue, and action, that I tend to forget to describe the setting or much of what's going on around my characters. I'm better about this flaw than I used to be, but it's still a weakness I have to watch for and catch--usually during the editing phase.

I'll turn a keen eye on the piece tomorrow, though, and mark it up properly, nasty comments and rare compliments to myself and all. I'm too tired to start right now, though. I'm sure I wouldn't catch half of what I needed to, even if it is only a first editing.

Didn't write any fresh material today. I'm concentrating on this story, since the deadline looms near at the end of the month. So, I'll probably be working almost exclusively on this piece for a while, with only a few scrawls toward other projects in the meantime. I may try to continue my research on the fairy tales, though. I have my list narrowed down a lot more, but I'm still unsure as to which one I should re-tell. I may just have to play with some of them after I finish my current piece and turn it in.

Well, I'm off to get some sleep, no matter how interrupted it may be by the cat, who wants to cuddle every few hours, and several nightly bathroom trips--which are frequent enough, being pregnant, but are now guaranteed to be even more so, since I was stupid enough to drink an entire pot of decaf tea by myself today while working on the short story. *sigh* But tea helps me to write when I'm having trouble getting started, or when I'm stuck. And it's just plain comforting.

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