That Nasty "P" Word Again

It's that nasty "P" word... yet again!

PROCRASTINATION.

I'm a master at it.

... and while I'm sitting here blogging on - I'm doing it again.

What I really should be doing is editing The Shadow Runners. It's sooooo close to being finished that I can practically see the book on the book shop shelf... and yet... here I sit doing everything but the editing.

I've even done all the office filing. Now that's something I always leave until it resembles the leaning tower of Pisa and becomes near life-threatening to walk past.

I've also drawn pictures of my characters, done some photo retouching for my cousin... all things that could be done after the edits.

These edits are important. This is where I pick up on all the little mistakes - like the "Ienpw" issue I mentioned last time, spelling, grammar, point of view problems - the list goes on. These edits could make or break the book. They could make a reader never want the story to end, or make a reader never want to finish it.

Super-important.

So why am I not doing it.... hmmmmm?

I've fallen into the trap we writers set for ourselves sometimes. The old "when I'm in the mood for it" trap.

Make no mistake, that's a real demon, and it creeps up on us and worms its way into our psyche. How many times have you heard a writer say: I'll finish that story when I'm in "the writing mood". Piffle!

This is where that other nasty little word WORK comes in.

The fun of getting the story down on paper - or computer screen - is over. Now the real work begins. The rewrites, the re-rewrites, the re-re-rewrites, the copy edits, the manuscript edits, the edit edits, the re-edits... It all has to happen, or the novel never gets to publishing standard.

So... here I sit blogging.

OK. Fine. I'll go do the edits. It isn't as if I don't know how. I do know how. I've even made a start. I've edited chapter one.

I even looked at chapter two. Page one of chapter two has a mistake of the "Anubis" kind on it so I ran screaming.

Yeah. I did it again. Ranger is, after all, a "ranger". He can communicate with all animals [a trait that becomes extremely important a couple of chapters later] ...and there, right on the first page of chapter two, I have Jaxxlar telling him [telling him, mind you] what a camorii is and telling him she can communicate. Oh God! Where was my mind when I wrote that paragraph?

OK. Don't panic. I can fix this. A couple of paragraphs is all it will take. Nothing too strenuous.

So.... GET ON WITH IT...

Right. No problem. I'm getting.

I'll just have my shower first, read my email, do the dishes, make a cup of coffee, make a few phone calls.... then... I promise....

Hi everyone.

I've been fooling around and trying to draw my impression of what a herrragh would look like. So here he is... ta-daaaaah.

Well, I'm not all that good at drawing humanoid bodies, but the animal parts look ok. Anyway, it will give you all an idea of what a herrragh is supposed to resemble.



Now, under the heading of "Research and Think BEFORE You Write"...

I also discovered, to my absolute horror, that I've been calling the deity of the herrragh, "Anubis", when the word "Anubis" is only the Greek version of his name. He would have been known as his original Egyptian name of "Ienpw" - pronounced (Yinepu).

Talk about a major blunder. I never gave it a thought. But when analyzing the situation, I realized that, even though I could leave it as "Anubis", the original space-faring people known as the herrragh who visited earth a few millenia ago would not have referred to their own God by a human Greek name.

Major bummer!

Thank "the Gods" for the search and replace feature on word processors! I guess I'll be using mine a lot over the next few days.



Cheers

Brittany Kingston

Congratulations

Louise Lucchetti

You have won a copy of:

"Whisperings of the Soul"

The correct translation of the Romani words in

"The Gypsy Storyteller" was:

DEBLA = SUN

DOOD = MOON

Thank you to all those who took the time to enter this competition.

Don't forget to keep an eye on this space as I'll be running more competitions on a regular basis.

Yours in love and light

Brittany Kingston

Competition

To celebrate the release of my Gypsy Poetry Anthology, "Whisperings of the Soul" with Eternal Press, I'm offering one complimentary PDF copy to the first person who can translate the following two Romani words from "The Gypsy Storyteller" into English:

DEBLA

DOOD

Hint: The poem "The Gypsy Storyteller" appears on my web site in my POETRY section.

If you think you have the translations, send me an email from the site with your answers in the body of the email and the words "Poetry Competition" in the subject line.

Click this image to surf on over to

Brittany Kingston's official Web Site.

Good Luck!

Brittany Kingston