Plodding Along - a Book Progress Update

Remember the turtle!
Slow and steady wins the race, right? And that's what I've been doing throughout April. And now (gasp!) it's MAY! Which means, of course, time for an update on my progress. (and forgive me if I'm blabbering. It's what I do :D)

My goals for April were to work on dividing my book into chapters and getting those chapters in order. Well, that was COMPLETELY accomplished (though after working my way through much of it, some of those chapters are probably going to be rejoined together, moved somewhat, or scrapped entirely).

By breaking chapters up, however, it caused a bit more work to be created. You see, each of my chapters (35 right now - including intro and conclusion) starts with a Bible verse and ends with questions and a prayer. Well, when I broke up longer "chapters," I obviously had to add these three components (or some of them, anyway), to the smaller chapters. SO that was the next part of what I worked on. I've currently made my way through twenty-seven of my thirty-five chapters working on that (and doing formatting - double space with indented paragraphs instead of single space with space between paragraphs) which leaves me with eight more to do.

I've also been taking my WONDERFUL online writing class "From Good To Sold" by amazing author Shirley Jump, and though I've been unable to completely keep up thusfar, I have learned SO much! First of all, I NEED to emphasize the conflict and add details. But the most monumental thing I learned is that I need to make this book read more like a novel. As I worked my way through it, I was ASTOUNDED at how much "telling" I've done. Not everywhere, mind you, but I need to make these situations COME ALIVE. And that is gonna take lots of descriptive, visual, all-five-senses writing. AND, I'm sure in the next 15 days of the class I'll learn even MORE stuff I need to do to this book of mine!

I'm still planning on trying to work on my book every day, but I may get tripped up a bit, since this coming Tuesday my family and I are heading to ORLANDO, and Clyde, my laptop, is staying home. Planning to print off stuff to work on, but with all the adventure, we'll see! We're back Mother's Day.

ANYhow - my goals for May are

1. Soaking in as much information from my Shirley Jump class as humanly possible, and APPLYING IT.
   
2. Finish up the verse/question/prayer stuff on my remaining eight chapters
3. Work on "noveling/"adding descriptions and such to the book, starting from the first chapter and working my way through the book.

Again, REALLY wanna spend at least some time on it daily (it works so well for me that way!), but we'll see!

Thanks again for reading my blabbering and following my progress. Thanks for your encouragement and prayers. They mean so much to me. And, of course...

REMEMBER THE TURTLE!