I’m eleven pages from The End…11 pages! And as you can guess, I’m very excited!!! Admittedly, this isn’t the first pass, and it won’t be the last, but I’m crossing my fingers that it’ll be the last big one. My first draft was crafted through the Fast Draft process, and while I’d recommend some version of that process (Book in a Month, Seventy Days of Sweat…whatever), it didn’t exactly leave me with a clean, totally workable draft. This is the second draft, and did I mention, it’s almost done!!! I’m going to send it out to a few beta readers, make my husband read it, and go back for a ‘tweak as I go’ re-read.

I really, really hope I like it. I’ve been writing/revising very steadily since the beginning of the year, and I’ve been happy with my new material and progress. I was not at all happy with the stuff I edited out (obviously). So now I’m just a tad bit nervous that I won’t like this version on the reread. But I’m crossing my fingers and really hoping…

Now…I have eleven pages to get to!

Hello?…Is this blog on?…Can anyone hear me?

Are people visiting and simply not commenting on my writerly post, or are people simply not visiting? **

Leave a comment just so I know someone is there and I’m not out here in the blogosphere all on my own.

**This is not to imply that I was not thrilled to read the comments of Kelly and Mary (thanks for stopping by!), and Stephanie J and Liz (hello again!).

I was going to tell you about my fun weekend, starting Friday with my first trip to the Toyota Center to see the Houston Rockets play (very fun), then moving through to Saturday when I went strawberry picking on a perfect spring day all by myself and then treated myself to a fresh chocolate pecan fried pie (yummers!). Today is just at-home stuff but I bought myself Girls in Trucks at Target, and I’m very excited about it, plus I’m taking the boys for snowcones in about five minutes (or however long it takes me to finish up this blog on writing…)

The writing is actually going well–or else I think so (that’s another post entirely–woo-hoo! could be two in writing posts in a row!) I am struggling a little though with my transitions. Actually I think I’m considerably better than I was, but I have a long way to go. I have trouble transitioning unless a scene has an obvious stopping point. Particularly if I’m cutting out during dialogue. I wonder if I’m going on too long, cutting out too abruptly, or just wrapping things up in an awkward manner. I have the same problem with writing about everyday stuff–for instance, if a character of mine was making a piece of toast, I’d probably describe her getting out the bread and stuffing it in the toaster, prepping with the plate, knife, butter and jelly, etc. I’ve just started reading Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, and Winifred Watson summed up breakfast (plus toast) like this:

She took off her coat and hat and set to work. Soon the blissful aroma of fried ham and eggs and coffee filled the air. She discovered an electric toaster. Toast took its correct place. She went back into the room.

Something about this paragraph just impressed me very much. She covers to bases without you getting bored, in and out of the kitchen quick as wink. It sums up the character quite nicely too. When I try to skim over the mundane, I’ve been told (by my critique partner) that she’s lost. That’s just one opinion, but still.

Any thoughts, suggestions, tricks or techniques on transitioning or ending a scene? I welcome them all…
Now I’m off for a snowcone!