The Line

I've been a bit remiss lately about posting, but I'm feeling buried under work and class and everyday life. Oh okay, and the Olympics. Michael Phelps is amazing! Plus today I learned my thyroid has still not stabilized and my level has been steadily creeping up, which explains the overwhelming tiredness.

I'm enjoying my writing course and I'm getting more out of it than I expected, but I'm struggling to draw the line between my work life and my personal life. During the day I work on the novel, and in the evening I work on my coursework, which consists of editing the next section of my novel for submission, and reading pieces by other students and giving feedback. I haven't gone to bed at a decent hour for weeks--I'm averaging a 1:00am bedtime--and on Saturday night when I have to finish my submission it's even worse, averaging around 3:00am. I have about four more weeks of class, so I suspect blog service will be light until then. I should emphasize how much I'm enjoying this class though. The feedback is phenomenal and I really know what I need to do to shape up the novel after the course ends.

This is an example of the edits I've been doing for my class:Apparently, according to Husband, this is not a light edit. Pah, what does he know, he's an engineer! But look at that pile of edited paper steadily growing. Hurrah!

Black Boxes

All is busy and quiet around here. I'm trying hard to keep from sinking below the load of my novel class and editing schedule. I just popped in to say hello, and share my pictures for Caroline's competition:
Pop by her blog to check out the fierce competition, and enter a photo if you dare, though do try to not best me, I really want to win her book!

Friday feedback

Okay, I may regret this later, but here are pictures of the new hairdo:
Voila. (I think Drew is mocking my pose in the last picture, that cheeky dog!) It's really not that exciting, I know, but I've wanted to give bangs another try for awhile and was afraid I couldn't pull them off. (Keep in mind that I'm still figuring out how to style them.) It's too bad I don't have a picture of my awesome 80s poof bangs to compare. Who knows, maybe next I'll go for the pixie cut or finally get a tat.

On a separate note, I received great feedback on my chapter and was pleasantly surprised by everyone's reaction. I thought it would receive a lot more criticism than it did, and I was happy to discover that the readers loved my research details, which I was beginning to think were a bit overbearing. Yay. Still a lot of work to do, but at least I know I'm heading in the right direction.

Bored? Lunchtime viewing provided courtesy of cult-favorite Joss Whedon: Dr Horrible. (Thanks for the link, Yvonne, I'm loving it.)

Nerve

My online writing course is going well so far. It's a lot like a normal writing workshop, only we post our writing assignments and feedback on a discussion board and meet once a week to chat online about our work.

Today I submitted the third section from my novel - the first fifteen pages of chapter three. I'm nervous. Nobody has read this chapter. Two people read chapters one and two last year. I did a lot of substantive editing on those chapters, but chapter three hasn't been through a deep edit and is by far the roughest chapter in the novel as it stands. I struggled with writing this chapter more than any other. I know it needs a lot of work, but I'm at a loss where to begin.

Sometimes feedback helps cast the writing in a new light and I know exactly what to do, other times it makes me want to crawl in a hole and hide. There's this urge in writing workshops to give others your best work so they will tell you how good it is, but the real challenge comes in submitting work that you know is not your best.