How has your month been? Helena and Leon are back from the developmental editor. I’m reviewing my final round of edits in preparation for sending to the copy editor and proofreader.

Stay tuned!

My recent blog post on developing writing goals will be published in my romance writing chapter’s newsletter. I discussed developing goals based upon how many words I might write per day.

I really like revising with my critique groups. Working on twenty pages at a time makes the work manageable. I’m not even worried right now about what the second draft will look like. I have the first draft that I finished in three months. I figure that by the time I finish my critique group work, I’ll bring together all my submissions together and make them into a draft.

This type of revising is a long process, without question, in that I’m only revising twenty pages per month. But it feels very thorough. After I meet with the critique group, I revise those twenty pages then I take what I learned from that session and use the information in revising the next round of twenty pages. I’m often revising right up until the following month’s deadline, and that is a good thing. Revisions can only make the writing better.

I talked to the editor of my food writing piece. From what she said to me the last time we were in contact, she had some minor edits. Of course, I always have my own as I imagine some new thing I can include or cut.

This is the first Saturday in the month, so I have two writing group meetings, the ACFW group from 10-12 and the romance writers from 12-2. On some Saturdays, I have a third, my nonfiction food writing group from 3-5. It’s all good, spending a whole day talking about writing.

We talked about Anne Lamotte’s book in the ACFW group.

In the romance writers’ group an editor talked to us about self-editing. I worked with her last year and urged the chapter leadership to invite her and speak to us. I’m glad they followed up and she was able to join us.

I always look forward to all my writing group meetings!

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