Sculpting a story

I love editing. Don’t get me wrong – I love writing first drafts as well. They’re fun in an entirely different way. But editing – at least editing my own work 🙂 – allows me to make changes that can turn a good story into (hopefully!) a great story. These can be tiny, subtle changes,…

Charts and lists and plans

I now have a scene list for the novel, as well as an outline, and it’s been tremendously helpful. In the past I’ve worked with what was essentially a combination of a scene list and an outline, but for this book I wanted to track more details, so I have two separate documents. My old…

Let the laboring begin

The past week was full of extracurricular events – the best was going to opening night for the opera Aida. It was so much fun I’m planning on buying season tickets next year. Next year they’ll have a performance of La fanciulla del West, which was originally set during the Gold Rush in California (no,…