Editing, You Plague Me

*Gasps for breath* Well, I've been running a marathon! An editing one, that is.


Yesterday I realized, to my despair, that I had to do some major editing in certain areas of my book Silver Blood. Cutting, pasting, fitting, dissecting, ect. Or, as I told my husband "I am going to preform surgery!"


It is very difficult to completely remove an element from a book. In my case I had to remove a character (minor but scattered throughout the book) and move information from the middle of the book to the back.


Airith, one of my main characters, falls in love with X-Sayda, the wild daughter of an Outland chieftain. She encourages Airith but then betrays him by marrying someone else for power. After her husband is poisoned (suspicious, anyone?) she decides that she wants Airith after all. By then he has realized what sort of person she really is and refuses her. Though the Witch Queen encourages Airith to marry her to gain power and influence.
Originally X-Sayda is only met or mentioned a few times in the book, her and Airith's past relationship is only hinted at.

I decided: "I should add more of their relationship to the book." So I did.
Then I realized: "By adding all these extra parts I am making my word count higher than I want. And how am I supposed to make this all time-consistent?"
So I said: "I'll just take her out completely!" Then I realized she was involved intricately in a major part of the book. So....I made her a minor part again. Sigh.

Have you ever had to remove parts from your book/writing or add parts that gave you grief?

Ode to the Crow - Poem

This is one of my poems that I am pleased with. It's about how I feel when I hear a crow's call in the early morning. It's an eery sound and hauntingly beautiful feeling.

Ode to the Crow

by Grace Pringle

Ode to the crow in her sturdy nest,

Ode to the morning’s peace and rest.

Ye be a bird of dark intent,

You are the silence’s torment.

Yours is a lonely lament,

A call to shake, rip and rent,

The dawn’s slumbering calm.

Early light in the waking night,

The morning and darkness unite.

Stirring softly and glowing bright,

The peace takes flight,

Shattered by a harsh bird’s cry.

Ode to the crow, ode to the morn,

One cries out in scorn,

The other, to be born.

Nature Museum

Where does the inspiration that fuels your writing come from?
Movies? Other books? Dreams? Conversations?

Mine can come from all of those, inspiration seems to hit when you least expect it. Today I went somewhere I never thought to go for inspiration - a nature museum.
 In my family it used to be tradition on birthdays to go to the museums here in Ottawa (Science and Tecnology Museum, Nature Museum or the Aviation Museum) Of all of those my favourite was the Nature Museum or "The Castle Museum" as we liked to call it.

Can you guess why?

I, however, had not been there in years. So, I made a point to visit it since I now live in Ottawa. Today was National Museum day so my husband and I got to visit for free!

To put all your fears at rest, that was not a REAL dinosaur, despite what you may think...

At one point I was looking intently into a display case and saw some vesuvianite (the green crystal). I though my husband was standing behind me so I cried out excitedly: "I have some of that at home!" as I turned towards him. Then I realized that it was not my husband behind me as I had thought. It was a woman who ran off rather quickly O_O

They had some of my favourite kinds of birds; loons, falcons and hawks!
One of my characters is named Falcon :)

I also saw a kestrel for the first time and was imediately reminded of Lloyd Alexander's book: "The Kestrel."
He was a favorite author of mine when I was younger.
 

Have you ever visted somewhere and unexpectedly found inspiration? If so, where?