Getting Back To Moving Forward

Wishing everyone a happy and productive month of August! It’s American Adventures Month, and if that doesn’t give us something to write about, we could always revisit or begin journaling. Perhaps write an article, an essay or a trailer for the last good movie you watched – or your next bestseller? You could also sharpen your writing skills with any of the many great resources offered by the Insecure Writers Support Group, founded by Alex Cavanaugh, right here and right now on this first Wednesday of the month, when IWSG members convene through blogging, Facebook, and Twitter to talk about whatever is on our writing minds and agendas. See what we’re all talking about here.

What’s on my writing mind? Well,

Photo by: Phil Reeder

For years along a winding two-lane road stood a weathered wooden sign with the word “Serendipity” crudely etched between its jagged edges.  How so? I fleetingly wondered, until summer’s lushness moldered in a bitter winter’s mire and a ramshackle house appeared. Much like the candy bar I’d tucked behind the horseradish where no one else would find it, the barely-discernible tire tracks that led to the crumbling house constantly beckoned my return.  Then life, as it so often does, intervened.

So now, years later, having unearthed the prefacing manuscript to the sequel; sketchily entitled “Serendipity,” I wonder if the story still breathes with the energy I poured into it so long ago. I have the drive, but what if the path has grown over? Only one way to find out, right? Can’t wait to tell you how it goes!  There you have the current scope of my journey, how’s yours?

As to the Optional IWSG Question of the Month, ‘What are your pet peeves when reading/writing/editing?’ I recently read a novel by two authors who, at one point repeated (nearly exactly) the same paragraph from one page to the next. Not sure who was at fault, but I think I’d speak to the editor. That being said, and speaking from experience, the job of an editor seems much like tightrope walking between grammatically correct and creative expression. Either way, words are in precarious balance, and this is where insecurity seeps into the spaces between each word I write when revisions come into play. Will there be anything left of my story? Or dare I commit (writing without revising) “the literary equivalent of waltzing, gaily out of the house in your underwear” ~ Patricia Fuller.  Somehow the old drawing board doesn’t seem as daunting after all ;-)

Fun fact:

Mickey Spillane ordered 50,000 copies of his 1952 novel Kiss Me, Deadly to be destroyed when the comma was left out of the title.

Happy Writing, Reading & Editing!