Man, you sit down to watch one episode of the new Dallas, and the next thing you know, months have passed and you haven’t blogged once! I blame J.R. In addition to rehashed dramas from the 80’s, I’ve been kinda busy with this thing agents call “revision”, also known as “rethinking every sentence you’ve ever written.”
Yes, I’ve been revising AGAIN. It’s been annoying, but through it all, I’ve learned one very important lesson – write it correctly the first time. Man, had I only know. This time I cut out almost 8,000 words! I know it seems like a lot, but since the entire manuscript was 67,000 to begin with, it’s not been too hard. Once you start “killing your darlings” it gets much easier.
Besides revising, I’ve also completed 14 picture books. Well, if you consider the mini-books I write for my daughter every morning and put in her lunch box, picture books. It started on the first day of school, where for some crazy reason, instead of the usual lunch box note, I folded an index card, wrote Moon Pie’s First Day, and made up a story. Guess what she wanted the next day? And the next day? Now I’ve written such masterpieces as Moon Pie Goes Fishing, Moon Pie Skips School, and Moon Pie’s Sleepwalking Adventure. Even though she’s a 5th grader, she still enjoys them, and reads them to her friends at lunch! Then she comes home and tells me what they think – “It was funny, but Brooke wants more illustrations.”
Awesome. Just what I wanted, MORE REVISION.
I want to see a moon pie story!