Rewrite in Progress

On January 1 of this year I made it to "the end" of a draft in first person of my MG novel, Green Tara. w00t!

Now, I'm going through the manuscript chapter by chapter, revising for clarity and revealing more of how the character feels. (I'm especially conscious of adding the emotional connection to the M.C. per the advice of my writing group. Slavedrivers:-)

Simultaneously, I'm going through the manuscript page by page, grooming every sentence and every phrase. And I'm experimenting with twitter by tweeting daily about the story. Yes, indeed. I'm story tweeting now.:-)

If you're interested follow my story tweets @thestorygoddess.

Sara Grant at the Sweet Shoppe

Yesterday, Saturday the 19th, I got to meet Sara Grant, editor and author of children's books. I feel triply lucky because:

1. Grant is funny, warm, and inspiring. (I love to be around people who love what they do, so it was a wonderful afternoon.)
2. Grant read the first few pages of my novel and said, "Lots of action and adventure!!!" (She had some more comments, too, specific points about lack of clarity and confusing orientation, the usual suspects when creating a fantasy story world. But overall, I feel like I've gotten a green light on my space adventure from someone who really has her fingers on the pulse of the marketplace.)
3. Grant gave a talk on the revision process and the energy of her ideas has left me refreshed. (Since I'm knee deep in alligators in a couple of revisions, it's great to hear some new angles on the same old problems. I really need perspective right now.)

Some of her tips on the revision process are fairly basic, but bear repeating. Do the macro edit before going into the micro edit. It's silly to spend time on word choices when a work still needs attention with respect to structure, charcter progression, or voice (both dialog and narrative).

Some of her notes are specific to how to tackle those macro edits. I'll get into some of those in my next post. I want to test drive one of the techniques first. Hint: It includes lots of colored markers. And if a technique feels more like play than a dreaded rewrite, I might actually get some traction here. Let's see, pink for emotional arc, green for setting, blue for action . . .

Credits:
Sara Grant: Collaborative Creativity-- a Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) event, hosted by Trish Batey, Regional Adviser of the Indiana SCBWI Chapter, held at the Simply Sweet Shoppe in Carmel, Indiana.

Sara Grant is here from London, representing her interests in children's fiction. And her interersts are both broad and deep. She's a successful author in her own right (currently revising a near future dystopian YA novel) and a commissioning editor with Working Partners, a company that packages several successful children's book series.