Thursday, December 24, 2009

Happy holidays!

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a happy NYE (and more importantly, a happy new year, for that matter)!

My husband MJ and I are visiting family for the holidays, so I expect this to be my last post until closer to the end of the year. It's been a very nice trip -- yesterday I had the chance to see a long-lost friend for lunch and do some last-minute shopping together, and then MJ and I saw Avatar in 3d.  Today has mostly been spent baking things and chatting with the family, and I'm still in pajamas. Overall, a very satisfying trip.

But I must admit to being a little distracted. I received this book for an early Christmas gift:

I really love it so far. Bell's advice seems really down-to-earth, and some of the writing exercises have already helped me work out where I'm really trying to go with SHARDS. Since the re-write has been anything but easy, I feel really energized to tackle this project again.

With SHARDS I just feel like I am so close to this novel, I can't see the forest for the trees sometimes in the re-write.  And since I need to pare the thing down anyway (how did I end up at 125,000 words? I wanted to stop writing, but I wasn't at the end), some perspective on the re-write is much needed.

So yes, amidst the holiday frivolities, I am alternately reading, tapping away on my computer and eating christmas cookies. 

Updates to follow, as always. I think we will be discussing SHARDS for a long, long time to come.  Probably as long as it takes me to work off those cookies (pecan sandies, peanut butter snowflakes, lemon bars, toasted coconut macaroons, chocolate chip cookies, brownie drops, Greek kourambiedes, mmm...).

2 comments:

Brooke Amanda said...

Hope you had a great Christmas!

Guinevere said...

I did, Shopgirl! We had fun with my husband's family, and that terrible ten-hour drive each way always generates lots of writing ideas through the power of sheer boredom. :p I hope yours was lovely as well.