Bernadette Benda

I’m writing this in the middle of the week, though this is my Saturday Morning Post (maybe that should become a thing? Like this is my column where I blather about anything I want to?)

This January I’ve been scratching my head hard for content ideas (for my blog). Maybe because I’ve been feeling a little extra busy and disorganized (easing into a new life pattern: new jobs, querying soon, editing, trying to see what I should focus on most). So I feel a little haphazard adjusting to new jobs and trying to query and trying to edit while other stories are beginning to boil on the back burner too early and I just want to sit around and do fiber arts.

(I’m trying REALLY hard to refrain myself from writing my Snow Queen/Heart of Ice retelling that I want to save for this year’s NaNo)

I also want to read more books but haha, I read ONE. I read one book in January that I actually started back in like October (ok but it’s nonfiction so there. I have a slew of nonfiction books on my tbr, including a giant book on Vietnam and another on the Indianapolis. This is why I don’t read that many books a year, because I like to read big suckers about historical events that you can’t read quickly or you’ll be like…what happened? Though this summer I intend to dedicate to reading fiction. Rant over).

I also started seriously editing Lily (Beowulf retelling) now that Silver will be in the wind soon. I’m trying to edit it more…smartly??? EDIT SMARTER NOT HARDER. So instead of rewriting it and rereading it a thousand times (like what I did with Silver), I’m trying to do an edited outline of all the things that need to be fixed and added and not rewrite anything till I feel like it’s complete.

So far so good.

ON THAT NOTE on editing, how do you typically proceed? My first step is always printing out my MS and reading it (and either ends with “needs work, can be fixed” or “what…happened???”) and then??? WHO KNOWS.

Like do you just start hacking at the manuscript??? Do you trouble shoot first???

And we’re just gonna end with that question and be mysterious about it *wiggles eyebrows and vanishes*

Header Photo by karl chor on Unsplash