{"id":10919,"date":"2007-12-14T06:59:53","date_gmt":"2007-12-14T11:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/2007\/12\/14\/slowly-i-turned\/"},"modified":"2007-12-14T06:59:53","modified_gmt":"2007-12-14T11:59:53","slug":"slowly-i-turned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/2007\/12\/14\/slowly-i-turned\/","title":{"rendered":"Slowly I turned"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though the table of changes that will accompany the manuscript back to the agent needs a quick pass, the edits for The Last Track<\/em> are finished It’s been a long road to this point, one I never expected would take nearly four years. I have learned many lessons about writing as a craft by writing a novel, found my voice, and discovered the most effective approaches for me.<\/p>\n

Here’s a short list of personal discoveries:<\/p>\n

1) Short scenes—one to five pages in length best complement my style. The less acreage there for hiding, the more likely I will keep the ball rolling.<\/p>\n

2) Almost every draft seems a lot closer to the mark immediately upon completion. Once the self-love affair wanes a bit, cracks in the narrative will show.<\/p>\n

3) When I start hating a project because it’s dragging, it’s time for a break. Taking a step back might just mean pushing away from the keyboard for an hour, or in other cases it means working on another manuscript for a few weeks.<\/p>\n

4) Once I realize and accept where I went wrong, it’s much easier to recognize similar dalliances in other writing projects or in the same story. And those foibles are in there. Somewhere. Much like a roach, for every gnarly insect a homeowner spots near the pantry, there are a hundred more slithering through the sheet rock.<\/p>\n

5) Feedback is almost always positive.<\/p>\n

6) There is a time and place for a professional proofreader: around the time the manuscript is 90 percent–or more–in the pocket. Otherwise the comments will take longer to read than the story.<\/p>\n

Enough writing noise for one day. I gotta pack for Russia…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though the table of changes that will accompany the manuscript back to the agent needs a quick pass, the edits for The Last Track are finished It’s been a long road to this point, one I never expected would take nearly four years. I have learned many lessons about writing as a craft by writing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}