I have lost track of the number of full revisions Once We Were Bears has gone through. Which is to say it has been uncountably many.
One of my New Year's Resolutions was to "move Beryl into the world." I'm quoting from the fragments of intentions I developed last January when I took advantage of a generous offer from my massage therapist: a free, New Year's yoga session for her clients. Some wicked challenging poses, a variety of thoughts on values, goals, and courage, and then space and silence and time to write.
In that stillness an image came to me: blackbirds flying.
I'm getting close to letting Beryl take flight, but I'm still holding on, fiddling with the small stuff before sending her out to Beta Readers. How small? Well, let's just leave it at the fact that I'm currently running a search for the word of. Yes. OF. (I use it a lot, and sometimes the line works better without it.) But seriously? Of?
So, yeah, I suppose it's about time for those birds to fly.
And what better time for blackbirds and endings and moving on than autumn?
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The opening image is the paper cut art of Nikki McClure, whose calendar I buy every year for myself and those close friends and family unable to make monthly use my bathroom in order to see the beauty she creates with a piece of paper and an X-acto knife.
4 comments:
Nice post, Lisa.
Once you get all those pesky "ofs" out of the way, send Beryl out there. She'll do great! : )
I'm on revision 4 of my book (in those places where I haven't lost track), but what I'm finding is that 3 revisions (in my case) definitely wasn't enough. I make pretty good progress and then run into a chapter that needs some major help. But... I find myself wanting to get this project finished, but also tempted to move on to my next project. Editing just isn't that much fun. For the time being I'm hanging in there, hoping to get a "beta" version of BLACKHEART done sometime before this year is done.
I don't think you're ever truly done, you just start spending more time elswhere. I still plan on printing out Gunslingers and trying to knock out another 20,000 to 30,000 words.
I think a better way to put it is: When do you know when it's time to take a little break?
But Mark's write, Beryl will do great.
I believe it was Leonardo da Vinci who said, "Art is never finished, only abandoned."
I'm ready to abandon To Kill the Goddess but that will have to wait until after my post Beta Draft edit.
Mark's "write"?
I must have writing on the brain
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