Posts Tagged ‘Deadlines’

Jan

18

2013

Revising in the BOOM ZONE

Filed under: Revision, The Opposite of Gravity, Writing, Writing Style, YA Books, Young Adult (YA)

I made my self-imposed deadline of getting the first half of THE OPPOSITE OF GRAVITY off to my Beta’s last night. (Chapters 1-22)Woo hop!!!! I was doing great on time, when Scrivener decided it didn’t want to compile and convert to Word. So needless to say, the last email was sent at 11:58. *head thunk* I could have been to bed a lot earlier if it hadn’t been for technical difficulties. But I did it, which felt very important, but in order to meet that deadline, I went to bed without writing this post. Which means it isn’t brilliant and full of puppies farting rainbows and unicorns, but hopefully the manuscript is–which in the grand scheme of things is much more important.

Of course, since I’m DEEP in revision mode, all I want to do all day is revise. And today is not the easiest day for doing that. I have the rescheduled hair appointment from Wednesday’s snow day and since I look like a Yeti–we can’t miss that. I’m also going away skiing this weekend and while I love these trips, I seriously hate packing. Maybe it’s the three boy thing, but I always feel a my excitement doesn’t truly get started until I’m in the car LOL! These are all good things, but how do I keep and sustain the BOOM on for this revision when I have other things to do.

*Stolen moments–they add up. I know this because when I started writing TOUCHING THE SURFACE my boys were ages 2, 4, and 6. I had nothing but stolen moments.

*Mullet time–this is my term for writing and working in my head. I find brain farting on the computer labor intensive. Some people put their butt in their chair and work out their issues with their fingers. I’ve never really done that. My fingers are sooooo slow compared to my ability to flip things around in my head. I’ve learned that mullet time means nothing if I don’t take the stolen moments to get what’s now in my head on paper, but I’ve also learned that when I sit down to write after thinking things through, my time is a lot more productive.

*I use music. I know without a doubt that I’m in the BOOM ZONE when I can’t listen to an audiobook. And I LOVE listening to audiobooks. But when I’m in the BOOM ZONE I can only listen to one thing–my playlist for that manuscript. I might add or take away songs as the MS develops, but in essence it is the soundtrack for my mullet time which really helps me make the most of my stolen moments.

And while this has been fun, I really have a million things to do LOL! So I’ll leave you with a random song off THE OPPOSITE OF GRAVITY playlist…

http://youtu.be/sJ1UieOBeMs

How do you make the writing happen when you’re in the BOOM ZONE? And what is the Tropic of Sir Galahad? Anyone?

 

 

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