Revision Friday: Having My Very Own Revision and Giveaway Winner

I'm going to warn you right up front, this may be a bit of TMI, but I'm going to do it anyway because I think it applies to the process of revision.  Yesterday, I had a hysterectomy. For you to understand the correlation between that and the revision process, you need some brief back story. (Notice my understanding that less is more when it comes to back story.)

    I had my first child at 19 and by the time I was 35, I had given birth to five beautiful children and inherited a wonderful step-son.  So you could say, my uterus had served it's purpose and I wasn't going to be needing one anytime soon. The strange thing is, an emotional grieving came over me the weeks leading up to the surgery. Why? It didn't make sense to me. It took me awhile to reconcile those feelings, but here is what I came up with.

1) I have an emotional attachment to something that is part of who I am. 

2) There is a sentimentality surrounding this body part. My children were first
    introduced to me there.

3) My doctor assures me that this will solve several problems with my health

    and well-being.

4) To get to that "well-being" I will have to endure some pain associated with

    the procedure. 

5) I'm going to need some TLC for several weeks.

Are you seeing the correlation? No? Here it is:

1) We're attached to the words we work so hard to create.

2) There are memories and feeling attached to the way the words are organized. We like how they sound in our heads.

3) Often it takes one of our critique partners, beta

    readers, agent of editor to diagnose what will make the story stronger.

4) Removing them will require blood, sweat and perhaps tears as we wor and 

     rework scenes.

5) After the process, we may need a break, a nap or even chocolate to get us

    through the recovery. We have to be kind to ourselves so we can roll up our

    sleeves and get back to work. 

The bottom line is I'm still me but healthier. Your story is still there but stronger. 

Have you ever experienced your own Revision Grief?

So, keeping in line with #5, I will be taking the next week off from blogging. :(  I will meet you on the other side on Marvelous Middle Grade Monday when I will review Kevin Henkes, Junonia.

Last but not least the winner of the drawing for the copy of Plain Kate by Erin Bow is....... Brooke Favero 

Revision Friday: Dialogue

Photo Credit

I'm neck-deep into revising my WIP. I'm going over all my dialogue, because it's one of the "fastest ways to improve your fiction," according to James Scott Bell in chapter six of his book,Revision and Self-Editing. 

Bell does a wonderful job of breaking dialogue into eight essential characteristics. One of these is to make your dialogue full of subtext. He explains that dialogue should be like an "iceberg",the part we read on the page and the part underneath the surface. There should be layers beneath the surface of story,character,and theme.

1- What has happened in the story so far will affect the present. This is the back story...whether it's presented in the story or not it should effect the dialogue.

2- It's important to "know your character's deep background-the events that shaped her from childhood on." In Susan Collin's, Hunger Games,we don't fully understand why Katniss is so curt with her mother until later. 


3- Often writers say that theme doesn't emerge until much later in the writing process. So once your themes have shown themselves you can go in and tailor your dialogue. Then when the reader discovers the theme, the conversation is more meaningful in retrospect.

Bell, James Scott.Revision and Self-Editing:Techniques for Transforming Your First Draft into a Finished Novel.Ohio: Writers Digest Books,2008.

So now you know what I'm busy working on. What's on your plate today?