StorytimeWednesday

  Your first draft if finished, now walk away for at least a day or two before you begin your editing process. If you can't afford to hire a professional editor to clean up your project, then you'll have to do it yourself. When I first started writing it took me ages to get the first page written because I kept rereading the page and editing, changing, and redefining the sentences. Finally, my writing mentor who was a previously published novelist who I adore finally got fed up with me during one of his biweekly catch-up phone calls to me when he asked how many pages I got written in the previous two weeks. My response was one page, and my reasoning was that the grammar and wording just didn't sound right to me. He snapped at me and gave me the best advice any writer could receive, stop editing and get the story out of your head and onto the paper or laptop in my case. Editing comes later. It's serious writing time. Now hang up the phone and get to writing and you bette...

  Get the story out of your head One of the great things about having a creative mentor is they don’t hold any punches and tell you like it is no matter how it makes you feel. I have just one of those types of mentors. Don’t get me wrong he doesn’t tell me anything that is going to hurt my feels, but he does raise my awareness by giving me critical feedback that if you look at it the wrong way, you might think he is being seriously harsh. But as writers and creative individuals we need that type of slap upside the head at times, right? During one of his check up calls as he called them, he asked me how much writing I achieved for the book I was working on called “Last Wish”. My response was simple, I’m still on the first page, I’m stuck on all this grammar and editing as I go. He was not only frustrated with my response he hung up on me. I was like damn I pissed him off. Two hours later my phone rang and he apologized for the dropped call. His cell phone died and he had to full...