Terry Helwig's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing-life"

It's near the end of January and I have one chapter, 16 pages, of my novel completed. My sister Joni made me laugh when she said 16 well-written pages are a lot better than 100 badly written pages. Very true! My lesson this month has been learning the importance of "massaging" my material--my first draft of the chapter was only four pages long; it was but a shadow of the finished product. Shadows are good--they prime the pump--but the key is to flesh out the shadows until you have a living, breathing piece of work. Hopefully, I've accomplished that. Today, I'm in the shadows of Chapter Two.