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Holly Lisle's How to Think Sideways

Holly Lisle's How to Revise Your Novel

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Writing Words - writing it is the only way of getting it written

editing htryn - Writing Words

Want to improve your writing or editing skills?

March 9th 2010 22:11

If the answer to either is yes, you'll be pleased to know that both How to Think Sideways and How to Revise Your Novel are open for new students again.

In these courses, Holly teaches you everything about her writing and editing process. I'm currently revising one of my NaNoWriMo novels for HTRYN and am happy with the progress I've made so far. If you're serious about writing, these courses are worth the investment.

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Posted By: Sonya 1 - Category: writing, editing, htryn

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Links and Tips for NaNoEdMo

February 10th 2010 19:46

NaNoEdMo is less than three weeks away. That means you'd best brush up on your editing skills now. If you wait until March, you'll lose precious editing time then.

Here are a few tips and links that will make life during EdMo easier:

Read Holly Lisle's article How to Revise a Novel and have a look at the One Pass Revision workshop. As I mentioned before, I'm currently working through Holly's course How to Revise Your Novel (veeeery slowly) and I think her advice on novel revision is excellent. Even if you don't agree with her, you're bound to find some useful tips for your own revision process here

If you'd rather have short, pithy advice, check out Darcy Pattison's 30 One-Minute Tips for Strengthening Your Novel. As the title suggests, these revision tips are short - an ideal pointer in the right direction when you're stuck with a specific element of your novel.

Dianna over at Fictional Worlds is planning to do an editing workshop in March. If you find you need a bit more guidance and a close-knit group of writers around you, you might find it there. Head over to the Organization Workshop Intro to get a messy story in shape for editing.

Every writer has a different process. As with all writing advice, you'll have to find out for yourself what works for you. Some writers are happy with a one pass novel revision, others want to improve their story gradually.

No matter to which group you belong, don't forget that you want to be published. Put your readers first, give them what they want. That may be all the editing advice you need.

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Posted By: Sonya 1 - Category: writing, useful sites, editing, htryn

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I have a problem with ???

December 6th 2009 21:39

I could have spelled out the words: question marks. That's not where my problem lies, though. I really seem to have trouble hitting the ?-key when a character asks a question.

I'm on page 33 of my NaNoWriMo 2008 manuscript now, going through the first round of reading and marking up what's wrong in the first draft (and what's worth keeping, and I'm pleased that there are a few good bits already) according to Lesson One of HTRYN. I'm not supposed to edit the typos and spelling mistakes at this stage, and I don't. It's difficult to ignore these mistakes, but I'm doing okay. The missing ?s are driving me mad, though. I haven't counted how many I've missed so far, but my guess is there's one missing per page. What's so hard about hitting the ?-key?

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Posted By: Sonya 1 - Category: editing, htryn

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HTRYN: Novel revision help

December 1st 2009 21:32

After a few bumps, I managed to sign up to How To Revise Your Novel, the new course by Holly Lisle. That's good news for me because it will give me some clear instructions and direction for novel revision.

I've mentioned a few times that I don't have trouble writing first drafts, but that I always struggle with the revision process. I have high hopes that HTRYN will make me a skilled editor of my own work.

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Posted By: Sonya 1 - Category: editing, htryn

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How to revise your novel

August 19th 2009 20:42

I'm surprised I seem to have never mentioned Holly Lisle here. Holly is awesome. She's a successful fitcion author, she's published lots of free material for fellow writers to improve their craft, and she's compiled a comprehensive course called How to Think Sideways.

A few days ago, Holly wrote a blog post called Do you need to know more about how to revise your novel?, in which she asked if people were interested in learning how she honed her revision skills. Of course, the response was huge. As a consequence, Holly has put up a preliminary How to revise your novel site where people can indicate what they want to know. You can also sign up there if you want to be kept in the loop about the course.

If you - like me - struggle with the revision side of writing, I recommend signing up. If you struggle with writing your first draft, have a look at How to Think Sideways - Holly shares her tools and strategies in the course, and above all she gets you writing your stories (feel free to contact me if you want more information on the course).

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Posted By: Sonya 1 - Category: writing, useful sites, editing, htryn

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