New work

I am starting a new manuscript and am still mostly in the research stage. I love doing the research and learning about new subjects.

What comes next is the anxiety: will I be able to do it again? Will I be able to create another story that my agent will like? What if everyone hates it?

So my question is do other writers go through this? How do you get over it?

Piece it Together

Revisions feel like they take forever. Now I'm in the middle of my manuscript and I have been deleting most of what I spent a year writing. Now I have a pile of word scraps. Pieces of paragraphs that I am diligently trying to sew together. I will not know what it will look like until it's complete.

Though I have never quilted, but I would imagine you have a vision of what the scraps of cloth will look like once finished. You can't really see it until it rests on your bed.

Wish me luck.

T

Still at it!

Well...I'm at it again! My agent asked for the dreaded revisions, which I knew was coming. I agree with everything she wants me to change, don't get me wrong, but it isn't easy. Nothing worthwhile is easy.

My book is worth the work and my characters are worth the extra molding. Just look at this picture...a movie comes out this month--a movie that was first a book. A book that was nothing more than what my manuscript is now--a stack of words and a list of demands.

T

Revisions

I am in the middle of what I truly believe is my final revision of, Shadow People. Well final until my agent asks me to make changes, and until eventually an editor asks for several more revisions.

There is no easy way to revise. At first I enjoy it...the first three drafts that it. Then I burn out, take a break, and finally it kind of spurts out like blood from a nicked artery. That is where I am now. The pieces are fitting together like a magnetized puzzle, like it was always meant to be written. I always ask myself the same question, "Why didn't this work this well five months ago? Then it was like pulling teeth, the words trickling out like from a leaky faucet."

I think the answer is the same for this question as it is for others, timing. Why didn't I find a job I enjoy so much sooner? It was not the right time. Why haven't I met the right mate, friend, etc? The timing was all wrong.

That final revision will come...when it's good and ready. That is my theory anyway. I might feel differently when I'm sending it to my agent, biting my nails.

Trish

Allow Me To Introduce Myself....

In the arroyo beneath my dimly lit window, I whirled around to see an Indian man with a scraggly salt and pepper braid down his back. His skin looked more worn than his cracked western boots. "Takoja...you look more like your father every day."--Excerpt from Shift, my first novel.

As a child I always had a vivid imagination, much like my youngest daughter who will play with a stick for two hours if that is the only thing around to play with. She also makes up words for things, like whoosa, and loopy. I started writing in the third grade. In the fourth grade my obsession for Native American culture began. I have always carried a bit of sadness around with me that I am not a part of a tribe like I feel in my heart. I have some diluted Cherokee blood and hope to someday trace my roots.

So the idea for Shift came in a dream. A half Lakota girl who suddenly discovered she could turn into an animal, unable to control it at first, with an estranged father, a dead grandfather who visits in her dreams, and a viscous witch after her. She consumed my thoughts until I let her come out.

Kimimila, butterfly in Lakota, will hopefully make it to the shelves in the next couple of years. My agent is currently sending the pitch letter to various publishers...in the meantime Kimi remains on my shelf and in my heart.

Now back to Justin and Josephine (the characters who are currently possessing me), they are demanding my time.

Trish