Getting Lost In My Happy Place!

This week I am gleefully off "in Hawaii" (in my mind), because I am editing my novel, Tropical Transformation, which is set in the Hawaiian islands.

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I am perfectly aware that when I am writing or rewriting a story I am in my "happy" place. As I delve into my own story to analyze the sentences and words, and rewrite things to make things flow better within the story, I sometimes can get side-tracked, because I get caught up in within the storyline, and I forget to use my sharp focus on the wording and the elements of simply editing. Occupational hazard, I think… that is why I have to read, reread, rewrite and reread again, and again, and again, to get a final draft. As I have mentioned before, I usually end up reading everything out loud as well, at least once, because it is easier to identify the flow of your storyline and sentence structure, and the flaws in many areas will stand out.

This week I am gleefully off "in Hawaii" (in my mind), because I am editing my novel, Tropical Transformation, which is set in the Hawaiian islands. I am loving diving right back into my own story and experiencing what my main character is experiencing through my written words. You know that feeling when you are reading a good book and you really get into the character's head and life? Well, when you are writing and reading your own book, you have the most personal of all connections to the characters (of course), and tiny, little bits of yourself are found within them and pieces of the storyline. It's the most wonderful experience to go back and get lost in your own work, I do it often, even with my published pieces.

So this week, I have been fully committed to getting back into editing my novel, which I actually pumped out as a first draft last summer. It just needed to simmer for a while as my life went in several directions and I was busy doing and writing, other things. Now is my time to get back into it, although I have an extremely busy calendar coming up within the next month. As I mentioned in a previous post, "She’s Calling Me", my main character in this novel is calling me back to finish the story off, that is, the editing and then the final act of publishing.

So here I am, late in the day, still in my loungewear and not respectably dressed as the birds chirp outside, the sun is brightly shining and I'm sitting happily tapping the keys to my computer editing my manuscript, Tropical Transformation. Life just doesn't get better than this.

Cheers! Lise

*photo courtesy of Jeremy Bishop on unsplash