Darswords

Last weekend I taught at the Crested Butte Writing Conference in Colorado. Amazing conference with fantastic presenters (highly recommend) and though it was memorable and magical…I thought it would KILL me.

It Didn’t Begin Well…

I am NOT a fan of early morning flights. Even though I had everything packed and ready to go, I wake up WHEN?

3:00 a.m.

…and CANNOT get back to sleep.

So I get up, do some work and have plenty of time to get to the airport. I figure, “Eh *waves hand* I’m not presenting today, so I will just go to bed early.”

I finally get to Gunnison, Colorado, my ride picks me and the other presenters up. She’s already scouted out a restaurant that had gluten-free and dairy-free food. YAY, ME!

The Assassin-wich

Whenever I go to different regions, I make it a point to try what’s local. I ordered the Trout…

As I promised yesterday in my post about my scumbag brain and how I don’t write down good ideas, today’s post is about two different types of editing: editing for content/cohesion, and editing for flow.

I want to talk first about how they’re different, and why editing for flow should be one of your last concerns, reserved for the final phases of producing reader-readiness.

Editing for Content and Cohesion

Editing for content and cohesion really go together. When you edit for content, you make sure your content is right. (WHAT??? Who could have seen that one coming?)

• You don’t have plot holes
• Your characters are developed and, as far as you can identify at the phase you’re at, all needed scenes are present and accounted for.
• All the background info that you can imagine your readers will need is somewhere in the work.

Editing for content is largely editing…

Having so much fun giving away copies of Proximity for free on Smashwords, and now it’s double the fun…Proximity is FREE for Kindle too! Head on over to Amazon to pick up a copy…and I’d love some help spreading the word too!

A special thanks to Bookfabulous Designs for the awesome graphic you see up at the top of this post! And to the wonderful ladies at Girls *Heart* Books Tours for all their help in spreading the word about the Proximity series! ❤ Love ya!

Vitality is coming July 16th!  So excited!

Lately, Brave New World has become one of the hottest selling novels, and many of us have become even more suspicious of that white panel van that passes our homes daily. Sure it has ice-cream and plays tinkly music, but that cover is so thin Stevie Wonder could see right through it.

After the whole Edward Snowden whistle-blowing debacle, the Obama Administration and the Intelligence community have been up to their ears in hot water and bad press. Spying on regular citizens with no cause or warrant? Invading privacy and throwing the 4th Amendment out the window? Reading our e-mails? Monitoring our Internet? Those activities are just the sort that create an image problem.

Thus, sources tell me (sources being the voices in my head) that, in order to get back in the good graces of the American public, the current administration has decided to appoint Santa to head…

Here’s a thing. Whilst I’ve been attending to things other than blogging, for a variety of good and not-so good reasons, I’ve discovered something interesting. When I have a task that I don’t want to do, my unconscious mind does everything in its power to make it a difficult as possible to do undertake the task. Now, I used to think of this as procrastination, I’ve procrastinated all my life, putting things off until the last possible moment and then working away like someone who’s working hard to win the hard working competition by working harder than a hard worker would normal work when working hard. And so on. But perhaps there’s more to it than that.

You see, I’m just that little bit more self-aware than I used to be and I reckon that I actually run two types of procrastinatory algorithms in my library of mental sub-routines. You…