What I've been up to.

[dawnofme]

I haven't been writing.  I've taken a two-day break from writing "In Harm's Way".   I have a .wps file opened now with the words Chapter Twelve, but it's blank.   I have been busy though.

I have been outlining, in my little notepad, the next few chapters.  I have done beta work for two authors.  And, I have been working with photoshop.

I have three betas helping me with "In Harm's Way" and each is at a different chapter.  In the last two days, I've gotten a chapter back from each of them.  They are all so quick.  So I spent time revising. 

I'm so pleased with my progress as a writer.  This is not to brag, but I started this journal to log my progress, so I talk about it often.  When I first started out, I had a ton of mistakes on my chapters.  My betas really had their work cut out for them.  Now, there is less and less red marks from my betas.  So, my hard work, learning grammar and sharpening my proofreading and editing skills have paid off.  I don't know everything, and I'm still going to continue reading up on grammar and learning the rules, but now I feel I can focus more on my writing style.

I decided from day one of my decision to go after my dream to be a published author, that I would not get discouraged.  That I would try to improve in layers.  First there was the mechanics and formatting to get down.  How to correctly punctuate dialog, the proper spacing for paragraphs, etc.  Then there was the awful time that I never thought would go away, where I put commas where they didn't belong and left them out where they should go.  (I still revert back to this stage on occasion.).  raynedanser was very patient with me.  Thank you!  She also helped me get point of view straight.  And then, there was the simple you're/your and its/it's.

My other goal was to improve my spelling.  I know we have spell check and I use it, but I wanted to get to the point where I was rarely misspelling.  I did not want to see that red line under my words!

Then came my grammar studies.  With the help of old textbooks and slaymesoftly, I slowly started to learn the rules that I had quickly forgotten after being out of school for fifteen years. 

So now that my formatting, spelling, punctuation and grammar are pretty much automatic, I'm going to be working intensively on writing style.  I know that throughout it all I've been finding my style, but I know there is room for improvement.

I want to get so good at this that when I get around to finishing/revising my original work, I know that what I submit is not something that looks as if an eleventh grader wrote it.  I want it to look professional to start off with.  Though I have no problem with the idea of working with an editor to change or fix things. 

One thing that has helped me is being a beta for other writers.  At first, I wasn't sure I wanted to be a beta.  I didn't feel that I had arrived as a writer and wasn't able to proofread my own work well enough that I could be happy.  But, I went ahead and put my name on a few lists.  I'm glad I did. 

It's much easier to proofread something that you haven't been living with for weeks, that you haven't labored over and stared at until your eyes cross.  Seeing and putting fixes in for other writer's mistakes has really helped me to not make those mistakes in my own writing.  Or catch them before I send off to my own betas : ).  The other fun part of beta'ing is getting to read something before anyone else does and getting to know other writers : )

Today, I've spent most of my free time playing in photoshop.  I made a fic banner for immortal_fic .   I'm currently her beta for this story. 






immortal_fic's  Intervention



The next thing I plan to do is make a new LJ banner for my layout.  I LOVE the one I use now, made by alwaysjbj, but I was thinking that it might be nice to have one with David Tennant and James Marsters and not just Spuffy.  I'm going to keep my colors and such; just the banner will change.  Maybe I'll make a new default icon to go with the banner.