My 5 Favorite (Somewhat Old Lady) Revising/Editing Tools

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  1. An actual printout of my manuscript. I think that once I’m done moving around big chunks of the story nothing beats a hard copy for editing. Sometimes I even go through a couple of hard copies – looking for various things, while revising a book.
  2. Sticky Notes, in various sizes. Anything that’s too big of a note to scribble in the margins gets put on a sticky note and added to either the correct spot on the page I’m editing or, if it’s a note for another part of the story, I’ll put the sticky note on the first page. This lets me make notes, but keep going with my revision/edit.
  3. A Thesaurus – I go back and forth between a hard copy and the online versions. I have two dry witted characters in my current novel and the temptation to use the word “dryly” multiple times on the same page has to be fought with some kind of weapon.
  4. Music – I use this for writing as well, but I make Spotify playlists for all of my stories, as well as a generic “Focus” playlist of music without words. Depending on the mood I’m in, and the scene I’m working on, they are great for getting me in the headspace of my story, or helping me block out distractions
  5. Visual References – I store pictures on a Pinterest Board, on my phone, and even sometimes put them in a notebook or on a physical bulletin board. Recently I needed to do better with the physical description of one of my male leads, so I spent a fairly significant chunk of time going through photos online and finding the right inspiration. Having actual photographs and artwork to draw from helps me to better describe my world and my people in it.

Now back to the manuscript!

I love revision…yeah, you heard me

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I’ve been AWOL the last few months on the blog, and with good reason. I’ve been writing my thesis novel for my MFA program. It’s been a pretty wonderful experience overall, time intensive, yes, and there was one rough moment involving my annoying wrist and a major deadline, but otherwise I’m so grateful to have been able to dedicate so much of my time to storytelling.

Now I’ve moved out of the drafting phase and into the revising phase. Some writers don’t like revising. But it’s one of my favorite parts of the process – especially where I am right now. I’ve got the big novel level structure stuff ironed out (hopefully) and now I’m dialing in on things like scenes and description. I may have said this before on the blog, but it feels like you’re building a house and you’ve got all the framing, electrical, and wiring done and now you get to do the fun stuff like pick out wall colors and buy new furniture.

Battle Against the Doomscroll

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In honor of the fact that my thesis classes give me even less time for mindless surfing – I offer up this new poem 🙂

Think Outside the Box

PUT DOWN YOUR PHONE!
Scroll away from the screen.
Never read the comments.
Trolls can kill.
That slop is AI.
And the IRL world is beautiful and bright.
Not perfect
But breathable.
And the people are better there 
I tell myself. 
And tell myself again.
And again.
And again.
(Yes, Yes, but, I mean, one more little reel won’t…)
PUT DOWN YOUR PHONE!

   -Jenel Alan

Successfully Making Stuff Up – Including Words

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I don’t know if I can fully convey, unless you are also a sci-fi and fantasy author, how rewarding it is to do a web search on a fictional name or future tech term you’re wanting to use and having Google tell you it can’t find any search results. It makes me want to do an evil laugh and shout, “It’s mine!”

Why is this so crucial?

Because nothing sucks like slaving over the name of a fictional planet, or city, or technobabble term, finally finding something you love, and then looking it up to find out it’s a famous death metal band from New Zealand or something. Sometimes I ended up using things anyway – if the search results don’t come up with anything to well known, but it always makes it harder to decide.

But, I’m working on my thesis novel this week and had the “your search did not match any documents” miracle occur two different times. Huzzah!

The High and Lows of Online MFA Feedback

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A couple of weeks ago in my MFA class we turned in a scene. We were told it should follow an introduction scene we had written for a previous class and that we should summarize that whole earlier scene in about 50 words (which is almost impossible).

So I followed the directions – at least I thought I did.

And my instructor left me a video full of feedback that clearly demonstrated his dedication to helping me with my work. Much of it was insightful, and encouraging, and gave me plenty to work on, but…

One third of the video was dedicated to his confusion over an issue that could have been resolved with a single sentence added to that summary of the earlier scene and/or, had it been a live conversation, a one sentence note of clarification.

Sigh.

Then last week we turned in a plot outline. Again, I got a wonderful video full of excellent feedback and encouragement. But…

I made the mistake of referring to my book as a science-fiction adventure romance….and it does have a love story. But I write very PG kinds of love stories, and this isn’t a “romance” novel – so I got a lot of advice about turning up the heat in my book. Again, I feel like a two sentence conversation could have solved the confusion.

Blessedly, my instructor is clear that I only need to take the feedback that I find helpful, and I’m sure a quick note on my next assignment will sort things out. But it has demonstrated both the amazing things (feedback videos) and the perils (confusion over simple things) of an online MFA.

3 Kinds of Feedback I Mostly Ignore

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In many of my MFA classes, including the one I’m currently taking, I get a lot of feedback on my creative work. It’s part of why I wanted to pursue an MFA, but sometimes figuring out how to process it is challenging. After taking lots of classes, and working with critique partners over the years, here are three kinds of feedback that I’ve decided I can, for the most part, ignore.

  1. If someone is just flat out confused/wrong about the kind of story I’m writing. This usually comes in the form of people who only read epic fantasy and/or hard science fiction – or don’t read a lot of fantasy or science fiction at all. Yes, the names in my fantasy novel are “weird” if your main window into fantasy is Harry Potter (though I’m not sure that Rell and Ragaryn are any weirder than Albus and Hermione.) And if someone only reads hard science fiction, it’s absolutely no surprise when they think my space opera romance scenes are too “emotional.”
  2. If two people give me contradictory feedback. In my recent critique workshop my professor loved the exact same detail that one of my classmates didn’t like. I’m keeping the detail.
  3. Like anyone else, professors have pet peeves and strong personal preferences. If I identify those I tend to take their comments on those issues with a grain of salt. I had one professor rip my “repetitive sentence structure” apart – even grade me down for it in the grammar category of the rubric because “word use is grammar.” And yet, she was the only professor or critique partner I’ve ever had who suggested I had some kind of large scale problem with this. She also, I learned, did this to several other students. So, beyond trying to pay a bit more attention to varying my sentence structure, I stopped worrying about this.

And anything that doesn’t fall into those three categories…well yeah, I probably have to fix it 🙂

Thesis Novel Subject is Now Official…Ack!

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The class I’m taking right now for my MFA is Speculative Fiction Writing II – it’s one of the classes I have looked forward to the most, and even though we’re only a couple of weeks in I’ve already learned so much!

The slightly scary thing is that this is the class where we finally have to commit to our thesis novel. I came into the program with a novel drafted that wasn’t edited and one 3/4 under way, but from the beginning I thought it would be a good idea to use the program as a way to write a new book. And not only am I trying a new book, but a new genre as well – science fiction.

So my thesis novel, tentatively titled “The Bins” is sort of Casablanca meets Firefly with a female space rogue as my lead character. It’s also inspired by the history of World War I (there is no clear cut “evil empire”) so I’ve worked a little bit of history nerd in there as well.

In this class I have to write two big scenes for it and officially commit – so here’s hoping that I’m being bold and not just crazy!

Fun News and a Shameless Plug

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Hi everyone!

I have what I hope is a fun ask – my short short story “The Roller Coaster at the End of the World” is a finalist in a short story contest at SNHU. Part of the final judging is based on votes from the public, and the top prizes include scholarships at SNHU. If you want to read the stories and participate in the voting, which runs through December 9th, just follow this link. (You do have to login to vote using the link in the upper right hand of the page, but it’s not too painful.)
https://snhu.submittable.com/gallery/bae4928e-ef62-43d0-87c7-070b1568d056

I’m a writer, not a businesswoman!

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Please read that post title in the voice of your preferred version of Star Trek’s Dr. McCoy.

This is a continuation of my earlier post about celebration. In my MFA program, I’m currently in Speculative Fiction Writing I – only a few days in and it’s glorious. I take forever to get the actual assignments done. However, unlike the Business of Writing class this isn’t because I don’t want to do them, it’s because there’s SO MUCH to do and SO MUCH to learn. (In fact, it probably took me 1/3 of the time to do the assignments for that class because I just wanted to get them over with.) For this class, I’d like to take the time to pour over every single required and suggested resource, to do every exercise for every character I’ve ever written or want to write. (Seriously, a suggestion that you use the Myers-Briggs personality test to help you write complex characters kept me busy for an hour.) I’ve already noted a laundry list of additional resources from the required readings that I want to explore when I can and, again, that’s just in a few days.

I am giddy with it. I can’t wait to write more and learn more and do more. The business side of things is a practical thing to know – and useful if you want to make money and share your work with the world – but to me it is pure necessary evil.

I want to write stories.

A Little Celebration

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I’m a hundred percent convinced that most of us creative types don’t celebrate our victories enough. Just deciding to be creative and inventive in a chaotic world is worth taking time to honor.

So in keeping with that, here’s my little celebration – One more class down toward my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing! More importantly, done with the two classes of the program that I was the least interested in. (Not that they weren’t important – but it was a bit like going to the dentist. You know it’s good for you and you have to do it, but that doesn’t make it fun.)

To add to the celebration my next stop is a class that is all about writing speculative fiction – I’ll actually get to work on my creative writing in my creative writing MFA – about dang time. Huzzah!