Thursday, July 12, 2012

Working on the Next Book

As I said in my last post, Werewolf Puppy is with my editor. While I wait for her, I've gone back to the third book, which I set aside to finish edits to Werewolf Puppy. Unfortunately, writing is more fun than editing, and I had to discipline myself to put time into the editing phase. But now that it's done, I can go back to writing.

Of course, first I had to reread the third book (still without a good working title), and it was an interesting reread. I caught some inconsistencies (whew!), and I noticed some of the writing was rougher than in the previous book. I had been writing very fast, and I think it showed. Nothing that can't be fixed in a good rewrite though, so I'm not worried. I deliberately didn't do any rewriting because I didn't want to get bogged down. The important part is moving forward.

I was farther along than I'd thought. I'd vaguely remembered being around 40K words, so I thought I was half-way finished. Try more like 60K, so assuming about the same length as Werewolf Puppy, I'm about 3/4 done. Nice!

I'm experimenting with new technology. My netbook is just painfully slow, so I was looking for an alternative. My husband kindly offered to let me use his iPad, since he doesn't use it during the day. I downloaded a Markup app (Markup language easily converts to HTML), bought a Bluetooth keyboard and set everything up. So far so good. Writing at Panera really is better for me, so I needed a portable option, but my Nook Color didn't quite cut it. The screen is too small, and the Bluetooth keyboard only sort of works.

I'll keep you all posted on how the iPad works as a writing tool. So far I am loving Markup. It's basically a plain text file with a bit extra for basic formatting. Perfect for writing fiction, and it means I don't have to mess around with conversions. iPad to Word apps mostly work, but for me that "mostly" can cause problems later when cleaning up the file for conversion to Kindle.