Modifier Mayhem

A few days ago I printed out some of my writing to begin the task of editing (ugh yay!). The first thing I did was take two different coloured highlighters and highlight all the adjectives and adverbs.

After its presentation, the quickest and easiest way to reject a manuscript is to look for the overuse, or misuse, of adjectives and adverbs. (The First Five Pages, by Noah Lukeman)

I now seem to have green and orange everywhere!

• shadowed corner
• steady breathing
• cool evening breeze
• prickly warmth
• sleeping form
• stinging pain
• scaly skin
• move quickly
• lift gently
• tightly
• casually
• internally
• clumsily

To remedy these I can try to
a) find more unusual adjectives and adverbs
b) strengthen my nouns and verbs so that I don't need to add adjectives and adverbs
c) use comparisons

But not all of these adjectives and adverbs are "bad", right? I mean, come on. Sometimes you have to describe a noun with another word. And sometimes the only way to clarify how something is done, is with one of those pesky -ly words.

Am I right? Wrong? Banished to writers' purgatory?

My New Kindle (and Other Distractions)

So... I haven't been posting much lately, and I can't even blame it on school work this time!

This time my non-writing, non-blogging activity has been due to the fact that my sister is home and we were organising her High Tea 21st Party...

... and the fact that I have a brand new Kindle to play on (I love it!) ... and I also accidently found a picture of marbled nails last night, googled a tutorial and then decided to try it out myself. I'm sure my students will think it's an excellent use of my time!

Teaser Tuesday (17): Exiled

Title: Exiled
Author: RaShelle Workman


Through weighty eyelids, she peered at herself in the glass and noticed a line of thick, blue liquid streaming from the charm around her neck. She reached up and touched the substance.









Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read.
• Open to a random page.
• Share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page.
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! Make sure that what you share doesn't give too much away! You don't want to ruin the book for others!
• Share the title and author too so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers!

Six Sentence Sunday (3)

There are numerous other entries for Six Sentence Sunday, if you'd like to read them.

Image from featurepics.com

   "I'll make sure Tora knows about this," he says as he steps through the doorway. "You know, just in case you forget to mention it to her." The air closes up behind him.
   Great, great, great. I wish I was still at the age where having a tantrum would be acceptable. I've never known anyone to mess up an assignment this badly and I'm pretty sure it's not even my fault.

Setting Yourself a Daily Writing Goal

So it's clear I wasn't going to reach 16000 words in five days, but that kinda doesn't matter since my actual goal this week was to finish a certain writing project, and since I did that on Wednesday, all writing I did/do yesterday and today I view as a bonus :-)

Anyhoo... I've been pondering the idea of setting yourself a specific number of words to be written each day...

Cons

• I started caring less about the story I was writing and more about the word count in the bottom left corner of my screen.
• I felt bummed about not reaching my desired word count, even if the number of words I managed to write was still pretty impressive for me.

Pros

• Knowing I was aiming for a certain number kept me more focused and disciplined than I would have been otherwise.
• Keeping track of the numbers means I can look back on the past few days and see exactly how much I've achieved.

Things I've Discovered

• Writing that much in a condensed period of time (which I haven't done before) is more mentally tiring than I expected.
• If I were to do this full time, every day, with no other work to distract me (something I've wished for for a while) I think I might go insane! A long gym break in the middle of the day would definitely be required!
• I would also have far more frequent back ache - I'm just not used to sitting for so many hours a day!
• And I'm kind of grateful that I'm a teacher (though I still wish it took less time!) - a job that gets me out of the house, interacting with young people and on my feet for several hours a day.
  

Have you discovered anything recently about your writing process?

Holiday Goals: Day Three

Goal word count: 3200 (I gave up on the idea of adding the previous day's missed words. That was never gonna happen!)

Actual word count: 2700

Comments: So. Once again I've missed my daily quota. BUT the awesome news is that I miscalculated how many words I'd need to get to the end of my current project and so... I'm finished already! And I did several hundred words of a new project! And I had a wonderful dinner out to celebrate my four year dating-anniversary! (Okay, the exclamation marks shall stop now...)

Holiday Goals: Day Two

Goal word count: 3400

Actual word count: 2600

Comments: Oops... So, um, there's this book called LOLA AND THE BOY NEXT DOOR that I kind of read about HALF of while I was meant to be writing today. BAD ME! But the 2600 words were fun... and LOLA is awesome. So the day was great :-)

Teaser Tuesday (16): Speak

Title: Speak
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson



I'm saved by a Centro bus. It coughs and rumbles and spits out two old women in front of the grocery store.



I know, I know, I should have read this book already, but better late than never!

I really like the way this book is written, like a whole bunch of small scenes stuck together to make Melinda's story. It is fascinating to read about how she sees the world and labels the things around her. I am really enjoying (is that the right word to use with this kind of story? Well you know what I mean) it, especially as this is a character I find myself relating very strongly to.


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read.
• Open to a random page.
• Share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page.
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! Make sure that what you share doesn't give too much away! You don't want to ruin the book for others!
• Share the title and author too so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers!

Holiday Goals: Day One

Goal word count: 3200

Actual word count: 3000

Comments: Not bad considering boyfriend decided we needed to spend some together (quite right) and so part of the day went to movies and the mall. So I should totally reach tomorrow's quota :-)

Holiday Goals

It's the end of term 3 and we have a week off before the final school term of the year begins. I have big plans for this week, plans that begin (and end) with writing 16000 words in 5 days. This works out to 3200 words a day. Now you may be thinking, that's easy, you'll totally manage that, but I am unfortunately one of those writers who mulls things over in my head far too much before putting them down onto a page/screen. Thus, the most I've written in a day is just over 2000 words.
*Sigh*
Setting myself an unrealistic goal here? Probably!




PS. Sorry, second campaigner challenge, it's just not gonna happen!