Gratitude Monday -- Ask and Ye Shall Receive Edition or: Oh, My Hat

I decided the other day I needed a conical hat. I needed it to help me get in character and get back into the manuscript I am editing.
I finished the first draft of it last June. It went down a few different paths, one as far as chapter 14, but I eventually found the story I was to tell and it got done.
It sat for several months.  I wrote something else that is now simmering on a mental back burner as I fix this one up.
But back to the hat.
I often have a prop or two around when writing to help me focus. I bought cowboy boots for the vampire western, a fedora for the story of the man who went to the wrong side of heaven and had to do God's dirty work to get a new life, and for this story I made myself a pine staff and took up drawing.
It wasn't quite enough. I wanted the style of hat commonly associated with witches.
I said so on Facebook on Friday. There was some loose talk of a cousin maybe making me one. She'd already sent me an infinity scarf which helped me with the first draft of this story ( thanks again, Terry) so she'd already helped in a big way.
I thought I might check the dollar stores as one never knows what one may find on a shelf. Meantime, my husband offered to make me one.
As there were none on the shelves Mike did make the hat for me.  Black construction paper,  a leg from a pair of pants that my once belonged to my dad later worn by Mike, and the cheap hat I bought in Australia in the early nineties.
Mike rolled up the paper, cut it down several times, glued on the pants leg and pinned it all to the hat.
It is wonderful, and for it all I am grateful.
It has a nice weight to it, if a bit heavy, but it is a good place to store my thinky thoughts while rewriting.
Because no description can ever do it justice:

Hat with infinity scarf.

A character photo, this time with reading glasses and staff.

Please click to enlarge photos for the full glory.

Gone With The Hard Drive

Ruins yield treasures.

I dug out the hard copy of a manuscript yesterday. I had no choice as I'd only backed up half of it and the hard drive it was on is ruined. How it got physically damaged is a mystery. It will stay that way.

It may turn out to be a blessing in that I have to retype the story.

Retyping leads to rewriting.

Said manuscript had lain dormant for several months.  It had gone to a beta reader whose taste and opinion I trust. 

Beta advised. Beta is right. Betas words are gone with the hard drive, but I recall the gist and it is on a closed loop in my mind as I write.

Writing feels good. Rewriting does, too, because I am re-imagining. It's similar to starting from scratch, but with a good well of ideas from which to draw.

Yesterday's output was a few hundred words, but it included shuffling of chapters, perking up of dialogue, scene punching, all manner of good stuff that happens in the first excited blush of creation.

I'm still waiting to hear back on a manuscript I've submitted to agents and publishers. This will keep my mind occupied while I wait.

***

The photo is part of the house my granddad built. I live there the first year of my life.

 

Salvage and Resurrection

My current writing experiment has been working well. Almost too well though I must note that I am in no way complaining. I’m happy.

I’ve faithfully devoted one solid hour every day to writing. I’ve managed to keep away from checking the email, bopping around the Internet, and playing solitaire. However, I’ve caught myself looking out the window once or twice.
If I do have to leave my desk for a moment I add that time on at the end.

Between the new material and salvage work I’ve cobbled together somewhere near 35,000 words. How much of that will stay is anyone’s guess. Rewriting, extensive and bloody, is in order.

I’m not even sure if any of what I’ve brought back to life deserves to be included. It was added in a cut-and- paste feeding frenzy over a few days. All very logical at the time. Retrospect may fail to show said logic.

The ms currently seems to have two or three ideas running it instead of one good, solid main focus. And after all that text-moving frenzy I’m not sure just exactly what I’ve got and where I put it.

I’ll have to go through the ms and reverse-engineer an outline. That should keep me busy for a while.

Six Months Later

Second thought is a wonderful thing. Six months after I sent out my first wave of book proposals I decided to rewrite the overview. I opened the file to take yet another look before printing it out. As I read it, I cringed. It was a load of preamble that didn’t say much about the book.

An overview should say something about the content of the manuscript. Mine seemed to have missed the point. Of course I thought it was brilliant when I wrote it. It gave an idea of the area in which I was writing. I honestly thought that was good enough.

No. No it isn’t. An overview should give the acquisitions editor, more likely her assistant, more than just a hint. I think it should flat out say to expect. And it should be interesting, informative, and well written.

Anyway, I cut out about 100 words and reworked it so it says what it should. I’ll let it cool for a while, then go in and proofread it. I’m going to take my time with this batch. It’ll be a few more days before the packages are sent, but at least I’ll be sending something sensible.