Randy: thanks, as always, for the coaching.
“Talent is good, but it is over-rated. Persistence, a good work ethic, and raw emotive force are more important.”

Good call! I’m not sure what ‘raw emotive force’ is, but I’ll try to develop some.

I’m reading through my middle grade novel right now and, boy, did I ever find a glaring mistake! I let the story sit for 2 weeks, and now I’m going slowly through it while I’m waiting to hear back from an agent who has the first three chapters.

If you can, let it sit and cool before you start sifting through it. It’s worth it.

Here is my question:
How do you edit a chapter that has been rewritten ten times? A chapter that you can’t get a clear view of anymore because you have all the ghosts of the previous versions haunting your brain. It’s been rewritten so much you can’t make out anymore if it’s good or bad or somewhere in between.

I’m going through NaNoWriMo and doing pretty well. About 25.000 words written and two more writing sessions to go until the half-way mark. I’m so looking forward to finishing my first novel after restarting for the third time, it’s not even remotely funny anymore.

I have really enjoyed all the work done on this subject.

I am possibly a late Junior or beginning Senior in reference to where I am at in the writing world. I have articles, etc published, but no novel. I am working on my fourth one. I say that because I feel so much better since I read the latest posting. I don’t consider myself to have much natural talent, but….I do have God given persistence and won’t stop writing because it is a burning desire to get the Word of God out to a generation that we seem to be losing.

I am grateful for your willing hearts to take us to the next step. So thank you Randy and Renni.

I need to do a “snowflake” for all three of them, to see if everything is in the correct order and makes sense. If not, then I need to fix it, rearrange it, whatever. Looking back, the writing isn’t horrible, so hopefully MOST of it is still usable, with a bit of “tweaking” to the rest.

So, that brings me to a question Randy. In writing a trilogy, do I need to do one GIANT snowflake for the ENTIRE story, or just each book, or both? What’s the best way to go about that.

Paulette, the Lord reminded me of a great verse this week: “In all labour there is profit: but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury.”
Proverbs 14:23 In other words, hard work, not just talking about what you want to do gets results!

The older I get the more I’m convinced that talent is only a small part of success in anything. Hard work will get you where you want to go. I tell my students this, too. It doesn’t take being smart to do well in school. Work hard, (and work smart), and you will succeed.

Must have been asleep when I wrote these chapters. They read like a travelogue and not a good one. It was easy to see why. There’s not a stick on conflict in them.

I got strict with myself used Randy’s advice to use Swain’s Goal, Conflict, Disaster method and left each chapter as a cliff hanger. Voila, a metric ton of fast improvement!

Andie