We wants it, precious!

You guys, I want a Nook Glowlight. For reals.

Generally I'm a you-can-pry-my-paper-books-from-my-cold-dead-hands kind of a person, but it's just so cute and has rubbery edges and the screen lights up so you can read it at night and it holds 2,000 books and has e-ink and a ridiculously long battery life and I JUST WANT ONE, OKAY???

Revision Process

So I've been thinking lately about my revision process—probably because my writing projects for the last year and a half have consisted of revising two different novels, but what can you do?

I'm a fast first-drafter and a long reviser. I adore first drafts. Apart from the initial onslaught of brainstorming new ideas (which is always awesome), first-drafting is my favorite part of the writing process. First-drafting is generally pretty easy for me. Revising is HARD. That said, there's an amazing sense of accomplishment when you make it through a really tough revision. It feels good to be able to turn your novel into what you meant it to be in the first place, no matter how agonizing and arduous the process.

I'm a Big-Picture-First reviser. I revise first for PLOT. Despite my detailed outlining, my plot always needs help when the dust settles from my not-as-shiny-as-I-thought first draft. My second draft usually involves Very Drastic Changes. This is where I'll flesh out characters, delete minor characters that aren't doing anything, work on my pacing, rearrange scenes, delete whole chapters and replace them with completely new ones. There's a lot of metaphorical blood and guts on the floor when I'm working on my second drafts.

I've mentioned this before, but I usually re-key the entire book when I'm rewriting. This helps me get into the flow of the story when I write new scenes, as well as forcing me to rethink everything as I go. It takes a while, but it works for me!

When I've finally finished retyping the book and making all the changes, I'll print it out and go through line-by-line and fiddle with the prose. That part's easy and fun.

Depending on the novel and feedback, I might do another revision after that, usually not nearly as extensive as Draft #2.

So really, I end up not going through a ton of drafts, because my initial revision is so extensive. Which is maybe why it takes so long, and definitely why it's so incredibly painful.

Currently I'm back revising THE WHALE AND THE TREE. This is my third major draft (technically Draft #4, but I really don't remember what Draft #3 even was; probably just a light revision?), and the revision is extensive. I've changed a lot as a person and a writer since I first wrote and revised it (in 2006 and 2007/08, respectively), and this new version will (hopefully!) reflect that. There will DEFINITELY be another draft after this one, and I envision it involving a ton of hacking. I'm sort of feeling my way through this draft and there will be a lot of things to sort out when I'm done. I'm hoping to finish in the next few months, but we'll see!!

So anyway. That's some rambling thoughts on my revision process.

I'll leave you with some pictures we took in Glendora, CA this weekend of THIS AWESOME AND ENORMOUS TREE:

Isn't it amazingly BIG???

I'm standing between ROOTS, people!

A Tale of Four Drafts

And now, ladies and gents, I give you SEER: A Tale of Four Drafts

The Four Drafts, from bottom to top, in all their glory.

Initial Idea: December 23rd, 2009

Outlining: 10 days (January 7th—17th 2010)

First Draft: 7 weeks (January 18th—March 7th 2010)

Word Count: 70,018

Revision Outline: 3ish weeks (March 25th—April 18th 2010)

Second Draft: 6 months and 3 weeks (April 19th—November 8th 2010)

Word Count: 81,937

Third Draft: 4ish months (January—April 2013)

Word Count: 88,819

Fourth Draft: 2 months (March—April 2014)

Word Count: 70,242


So. Four years, four drafts. The word count rise and fall is really interesting to me—I ended up about where I started, adding and deleting completely different words along the way.

(For anybody wondering about the long gap between November 2010 and January 2013, I was busy working on other projects, querying, and falling in love and getting married. :-D)

How to Survive an Arizona Summer

(a not-really-all-that-sarcastic-blog-post-by-Joanna)

1. Stay inside as much as is humanly possible. Draw the blinds. Keep the lights off, turn the fans on. DON'T LEAVE YOUR HOUSE.
2. Drink lots of water, and bring water with you any time you have to leave your house.
3. Park your car away from the direction of the sun.
4. Go shopping before noon.
5. Bring a cooler with ice packs to keep your perishable food from… perishing… en route from the grocery store to your house.
6. Bring a sweater when going to restaurants/movie theaters. Somehow business establishments can afford enough air conditioning to mimic arctic temperatures.
7. Stick your head in the freezer, shut your eyes, and dream of Alaska.
8. Remind yourself that November is coming. Eventually.
9. Try not to envision the grisly and most-definitely-pre-meditated murder of the next out-of-state person who tells you glibly "It's a dry heat."
10. Try not to weep at your power bill.
11. Head north to Prescott/Flagstaff for the weekend. Or every weekend.
12. Eat ice cream. You deserve it.

Ultraviolet & Sorrow's Knot

Happy April to all and sundry! Also, how is it April already? Pretty sure that joke's on all of us…

Whilst waiting for feedback on my revisions, I read two phenomenal books last week: Ultraviolet by R. J. Anderson, and Sorrow's Knot by Erin Bow.

Ultraviolet is sneaky—it starts out as one kind of book and ends up as another and was an amazing ride. Interesting and colorful and unusual.

Sorrow's Knot ripped my heart out and trod on it a bit—definitely read that one with a box (or two!) of kleenex. Lyrical and eerie and gut-wrenching.

Both books are HIGHLY recommended!

Kill 'Em

So, last week I hacked the first part of SEER to bits, then slowly stitched it back together again. I condensed/cut down the first ten chapters to just six, and my word count of 89,000 is now at 73,000. 0_o I think I'm beginning to learn the true meaning of the phrase "kill your darlings"...  Not 100% sure if all the changes are working quite yet, but I'll get there!

The aftermath of the hacking! Deleted scenes over there on the right.

In other news, I get to see Shannon Hale tomorrow night at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe. I'm so excited!!!

In other other news, I now own the Frozen bluray AND the Frozen soundtrack, so that's pretty awesome. :-D Seriously, that movie is so good I could watch it every single day like a seven-year-old. Beauty and the Beast will always be my favorite Disney movie, but Frozen and Tangled come pretty close these days.

And last but not least, the hubs and I scored this awesome coffee table at a garage sale last weekend:

Writing & Editing, as seen by Rapunzel and llama-Emperor-Kusco: