Mental Meanderings

Whoops, How remise.

I didn't write my journal entry yesterday. Opps I can't believe I forgot it amongst all the other things I needed to get done yesterday. But I guess these things happen.

The good news is I'm beginning to feel better about my novel coming to an end. I'm just wrapping up chapter nine and starting chapter ten tomorrow and it's looking good.

I've been reading romance stories lately. I have so many of them registered at Bookcrossing.com that are on my to be read list. I've got a few ready for release but most I haven't read yet. I've got to get to the library and talk to them about Bookcrossing, see if they'll object to Bookcrossing books on their exchange and perhaps leave some bookmarks with them.

Anyway, I've been reading romances and taking note of the way they use description to express characters and how they get everything together. As I've mentioned before my first draft is coming up rather short and I think a great deal of that has to do with the fact that I get the facts on the page but don't embellish them. On the occasions when I embellish them, make creative, descriptive shows (as opposed to telling) it balances better. So a major overhaul on my first draft when I'm through chapter ten will be to get a lot more 'showing' in there and a lot less 'telling'.

I'm also going to cut any unneccessary scenes and perhaps add some that would be important for character developement. I need to bring out their differences a bit more because you really don't get to see much of who they are in the background with the first draft. It's an easy amatuer mistake to write it all and not explain any of it.

For example, I know Jake is well off, lives in a really nice, modern, interior decorated appartment. But at no stage do I inform the readers and that sort of information says a lot about who Jake is and how he lives before Emma.

These sorts of thoughts are coming up now and they are fairly timely since I'll have finished chapter ten of the first draft very soon. I'm getting excited now. I know it's going to need a lot of work in the second and third draft but I've actually got something to work with. A full story, beginning, middle and end. It just needs polishing.

Paul should be taking the kids out today. I did consider going to see a movie but I really don't have time and I'd have to depend on Paul's transportation. I can't wait till I get a car of my own. Settlement should be going through in the next two to three weeks so hopefully a car will follow that up fairly swiftly.

I'm into Round Four of the Poetry Raw. Isn't that incredible? Competition is getting tough. My current opponent has written some great entries and I'm really going to have to work exceptionally hard to make sure I can compete. We are both fairly evenly matched which makes this round really difficult. But it's exciting making it so far. If I make it past this round, I'll be in the finals. Wouldn't it be fantastic to be WDC Poetry RAW Lightweight Champion? Imagine, I could do exhibition rounds and title rounds against people who want to wrest the title from me.

Well, there you go, an entry. Sorry for missing you yesterday. Nothing interesting happened so you didn't miss anything. Meanwhile, onward to today. Breakfast, my belly is telling me. Have a great weekend everyone.