Thursday, August 16, 2007

breakthrough!

For those following the writing journey here, the above is a direct quote from my writing group today. I've been working very hard on revising my second novel and have specifically struggled with making the two voices distinct. Getting down to the bones worked - today's version won their hearty approval. Yay!

Then I came home and found an email from a new writer friend who recently swapped first 50 pages with me. Her take: "I think your writing is lyrical, haunting and multi-dimensional. Reminds me of Anna Quindlen."

Yay again!

It was a real treat to read her pages as well. The writing life is good right now!

In a few weeks I'll be heading to a 5-day writing sojourn where I'll have the first 100 or so pages in great shape and a goal of carrying that on through the book. And I'm reading again next week in group so will have that much more feedback to tuck in my duffel and take with me.

In the spirit of sharing the wealth, I invite you to comment on your own breakthroughs here. Let's make a big pile of them and celebrate. :)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations! This is definitely worth celebrating. I have a breakthrough, too. It's not as big, but it is to me. I am reorganizing my house and I'm finally getting somewhere with it. As a bonus it is inspiring the old feeling I used to get when writing a story. Yay for both of us!

L.

billie said...

Thanks, Matthew!

L., thank you too. Your reorganization breakthrough is huge, imo. In many ways, it's a very similar (but for me more daunting) process to editing a story or a novel, and I find that reorganizing my living space often precedes something creative happening. I hope this is true for you as well. A hearty congratulations on your work!

And thank you for sharing. :)