The Eyes Have It

You know, I'm glad there are so many talented people who are editors. I'm a pretty decent writer, but I don't have an over inflated opinion of my precious prose, either. In fact, I flirt with writing purple. OK, forget flirting. My first drafts are so purple I could squeeze grape juice from them.

And my lovely Red Sage editor has done an amazing job of preventing me from making a fool of myself. :D

O.K. more then once, if the entire truth is to be told. Which is one of the many reasons why I adore her.

S. has this thing about eyes, and as a romance writer, I have a tendency to dwell on the same. The eyes, after all, are the windows to the soul....and in turn, the heart. So natch, they tend to occupy a good amount of space in my writing.

But after spending an evening on the phone with my editor recently, I went back and re-read some of my work with a "literal"...well...eye....toward what I was truly saying (or writing, to be specific.)

By page 100 I was cracking up. My character's eyes had dropped, shot out, plunged, raked (no, not leaves), caressed (you know, hugs from eye jelly don't do it for me) and danced (they do a mean mambo.) Hell, they all but washed windows!

Those are some talented eyes.

Since I still consider myself a lucky beginner, that's my one and only piece of writing advice. Read your work with a literal eye, and make sure before you submit it that your character's eyes don't take on a life of their own.

Now, back to the dual writing challenges...Seventy Days of Sweat and Nanowrimo.

(No, Virginia, blogging does *not* apply to your daily word count)