Looking Forward

This is not my picture

I keep trying different crafts.  Quilting, beading, crocheting, knitting, weaving, finger weaving, scrapbooking, painting, drawing, and other things that I can't think of a name for.  My latest projects have been more of the 'make it up as I go' kind.  Last Christmas I made a big black dragon out of card stock, paper towel rolls, pip cleaners, tap, and lots of hot glue.  He hangs above my bed.  His name is Verbrennen, which in German means burning.  Recently I finished a hot air balloon/flying house model.  And a steampunk themed mixed media notebook.   One thing I've learned with every new craft is that the first one is never the best.  It may look good to me when I first make it, if I make a few more and learn some more about it the first one will begin to look worse and worse.  When I was nine I made a little quilt.  All by hand and with a night sky embroidered on the back.  I was really proud of that little blanket.  Till my grandmother actually taught me how to quilt and I realized everything that I had done wrong.  I'm still a little proud of that first quilt.  For a nine year old who didn't know how to quilt I think it was a pretty fair attempt.  But it is by no means as good as I thought it was then.  Its that same way for the other crafts.  No matter how good it looks when I make it I know that in a month or two I'm going to look back and see all the flaws that I can't see now.  My friends Della and Sarah mentioned this a few weeks ago when we went to the museum.  Only they applied it to writing, and for some reason I had never really thought about it that way before.  I may write something to day; a character, a phrase. and think it my best work yet.  But I forget that in time my skill with writing will grow and that amazing character will look flat and be filed away under 'good tries'.  The Nightin books that I'm working on now will not be my best work.  No matter how much I edit it will not be my best book.  Actually I'm hope it isn't the best, because in five or ten years I want to be a much better writer.  It's almost sad to think that the Nightin books aren't that good.  But at the same time it's something to look forward to.

Well I need to rap it up.  I'm going to Colorado tomorrow for a week and I have to get some packing done.  Hopefully I'll have some pictures for you next week.
Have a blessed two weeks.
Morgan J

Oh Look I have an Editeor

This is not my picture

I learned how to write during National Novel Writing Month.  NaNoWriMo is a challenge were you try to write a 50,000 word novel in one month.  You tone out that inner-editor and write like there is no tomorrow.  I got pretty good at that.  My inner-editor was almost forgotten after four years of not listening to her.  But then this year I started editing.  In all those past years only once did I edit one of my short stories and then I simple got my big sister to read it and tell my what was wrong.  Not really the same as editing it myself.  Most of the time I never reread any of my writing.  The book was just filed away in a folder in the very deep places of my computer.  All last year I was getting pushed to edit.  My sister would look at my writings and tell me that I really should edit.  Friend who I would tell about my stories would tell me to edit.  My grandparents would read one of my books and say 'Morgan you should really edit this'.  But it took a complete stranger to get it through my head.  I took a writing class with a local author and she read some of my stuff.  She was impressed and told me I should really start editing. "You need to stop writing and finish the books you already have."  I had never thought of it that way, but she had a good point.  My books weren't as I had thought finished.  They were only a ruff draft.  Like a raw diamond that hasn't been cut or polished.  A stranger telling me that woke me up and I finally acted on all the advise that everyone else had been giving me all year.  Editing posed a new problem that I had never in countered before; how do you edit?  It took me a few months but I managed to rewrite the whole plot outline for the first Nightin book, and slowly I began rewriting.  I'm still puttering away on it but every so often I hear my inner-editor pointing out something that can be easily changed.  She is waking up and I'm rather enjoying the help.  It's like having a spell check system in your head that points out confusing sentences and weak scenes.  I don't hear her often but maybe that's just because I don't know how to listen.  This summer I made the goal of 10,000 edited words and right now I'm only half done, but if I can write 50,000 words in one month I can surly edit 5,000 in the same time.  it's all a work in progress.

Have a blessed week
Morgan J