Deep POV Edit Session

Yesterday I recorded an editing session exploring things I learned from the Rivet Your Readers book by Jill Elizabeth Nelson. I had to try a few times to get Screencastify to work on this computer, so these videos aren't as in-depth as the first recordings I attempted. I hope you enjoy them anyway :) Sorry if the volume is a little loud, I tried to turn the microphone volume down before recording these.

Some Disclosure

I don't talk a lot about personal stuff on my blog, mostly because there's weird people out on the Internet like stalkers and such, but I feel a need to explain why I haven't done a lot of updating on here.

I'm pregnant! And while that's exciting news, let me tell you, pregnancy for me is not fun. I deal with a lot of morning, afternoon, and evening sickness, along with a serious lack of energy and motivation. I actually quit my job because I couldn't stand how sick I was feeling, being on my feet so much (and I love having a labor intensive job ☹). Sitting at our desktop computer for a lengthy time is a real challenge for my stomach, so I've done a lot of my book work on laptops. The cold weather has been terrible to my nausea too; my whole body will punish me for sudden temperature changes outdoor to indoor and shower times, and I've almost fainted a few times. What is hygiene again?

While being so sick drained most of my motivation and energy for doing just about anything, I've gotten off my antidepressant for the remainder of the pregnancy for the baby's sake, and that's just about done it for me. It's an awful thing not feeling any real excitement for anything, even my writing and editing. I still love doing it, but -- it's really hard to describe unless you've experienced clinical depression. It's like wanting to do it but not do it all at the same time.

However, I've been pretty regular about my editing lately; I'm on the 2nd edit of Incarnate Memory, which is exciting. It's going pretty fast. I tried to make a few editing videos for this post showing what I've learned from Rivet Your Readers that I mentioned in my last post, but I had technological issues. Hopefully my next post will have them once I have access to my hubby's new laptop.

Thank goodness for nausea medication, which has been a huge help. I'm sorry to dump all this onto my readers, but I hope my lack of news on Xenithar's Lair makes more sense now.

Writing Deeper

For Christmas my hubby gave me this wonderful book called Rivet your Readers with Deep Point of View by Jill Elizabeth Nelson. It's already majorly changed the way I edit and write.

Jill's focus on the book is using your narrative and characters to show rather than tell, and to keep the narrative voice out of the way when it comes to the story and character experiences. In all my years of writing I've developed bad habits along with the good ones, and writing "deep" POV was never one of my strong points.  Occasionally I would write deep POV and not realize it, but much of my prose, even after editing, involved a lot of telling and mundane narrative.

There's a lot to say about this book, but this isn't a book review. The easiest way to sum up what this book says is to write characters how you think to yourself.  Look around you.  Do you think to yourself, "I see this computer and how white the Blogger screen is"? No, you'd think "the white screen blared at me, as if berating me for not updating for over a month." I already see it, so only the description matters.

Sorry if that didn't make sense; it's hard to explain without throwing examples in, but I was thinking of saving that for an editing video on Book III of LI. This post is really about my relationship with my characters and how Jill's book has affected us.