revision tagged posts

Book 3 Draft 3, New House News, and Cookies!

A lot has happened since I posted last, especially regarding draft 3 of book #3.

Book 3 Draft 3

Shortly after the first of the year I began the process of getting ready to write draft 3 of my third book, working title Guardians. The first step was to read draft 2 from beginning to end to get a sense of the state of the story. And the results were what? Twelve-plus pages of hand-written notes, that’s what.

Step 2 is to go through all of the feedback I’ve gotten from my critique group and consolidate their comments onto one document. How much is that? This much.

The stack of draft 2 feedback

It’s hard to see the markings on the ruler but the stack is over six inches high. And since I’m looking at feedback from eight different people, I need to spread out. A lot...

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Revision and Self-Editing for Publication Review

Small 3-star rating on dark blue background

Let’s get this on the table right now: Jim Bell does not write a bad craft-of-writing book. Does NOT.

In one case, however, the title of his book does not match the contents. That case is Revision and Self-Editing for Publication. As K. M. Weiland noted in her 3-star review of this book on Goodreads, there’s little here about revision or self-editing. That’s too bad because what little there is clearly shows that if Bell had focused on those tasks, rather than writing yet another book about writing a decent first draft, he could have done well.

Bell divides the book into two sections: “self-editing” and “revision...

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