What you are currently doing won’t get it to where you are going. Listen in to our discussion on the importance of building safety culture.
"I apologize and feel guilty a lot."
BONUS! Find this helpful? To download this post as a PDF, click here!Congratulations on making your first sale! You may be experiencing a range of emotions right now. You’re likely feeling excited but also a bit nervous about what to do next. You might also be worried the sale was a fluke and no more […]
So I seriously get tired of my kids finishing centers/work early and asking me, "What can I do now?" How about sit quietly with a book and don't talk...LOL! In all seriousness, it's gotten kinda craz
Is the existence of happy teachers a myth? Do they actually exist, or are they just something that we aspire to? We all have them. You know what I am talking about. Those habits that hold
Learn how to write a first novel: These 10 do's and don'ts will help you plan and structure your process and avoid common first-time book-writing mistakes.
From when to expect common pregnancy symptoms to what to avoid, here's everything you need to know about your first trimester of pregnancy by week.
Hello fellow educators! 🙂 One of the best ways that I’ve found to stay on top of what I am doing throughout the year is to have long range plans. I have them for first grade, and now I have them for third as well! 🙂 We have a county curriculum pacing guide in our...Read More »
Let’s talk teaching reading comprehension remotely. Can we just pause for a second. Okay… I know online teaching is very overwhelming…but teaching is so much more than just pushing out activity after activity for our students to do at home. Yes….they can do activities on their own…BUT…. only if they have been taught first. Now ... Read More about Teaching Reading Comprehension Remotely
Learn the top Blog Post Tips that you need to read before your publish your blog post. make sure your blog posts is a success with these tips!
So you’ve bought your first sewing machine. Congratulations! Now, what do you do first? We have a few practical suggestions for beginner sewists. These are the most important things you need to know before you start sewing.
In this beginner-friendly post, I'm going to show you how to start your own candle blog, step-by-step!
So, you started a blog. Now what? Here is everything you should and should NOT focus on during your first month of blogging.
Diet vs herbs - which one is more important? Which one comes first - when you're trying to control menopause or feel great after menopause? Find out here.
Croatia is indeed an interesting place to visit thus you must not miss its capital city! There are numerous things to do in Zagreb that will certainly keep you interested. If that's not enough, why not venture to its closest major attraction! Read this post and learn about that.
xxxxx
This year I celebrated my 5th year of blogging and I am both ecstatic and emotional. Back reading from my first blog post in 2013 I am proud to say that I have gone a long way and improved my blogging skills. Read my first ever blog post here! Years of being in the blogging
This is a fun activity to get students moving on the first day of a Sociology class. The activity involves students walking around the classroom to different stations to answer questions. After they have visited all of the stations, the class discusses the answers as a whole. Example Questions: List the Social Media outlets that you use? If you do not go on social media, you can write that. What is your favorite food? What's trending right now? What do you notice about this classroom? Multiple Editable Formats: I have it in multiple formats so you can utilize a version that works for your classroom (Microsoft PowerPoint, PDF, & Google Docs). Follow Learning the Social Sciences on TpT www.learningthesocialsciences.com
In this blog post, I share some of the secrets to prepare for a manager position when you're a first-time leader.
From when to expect common pregnancy symptoms to what to avoid, here's everything you need to know about your first trimester of pregnancy by week.
Not sure what to do when someone lies to you in a relationship? The first step is learning to recognize when your partner is bending the truth.
Do you need a better plan for managing your money? Check out this complete guide to writing your first budget!
What's the first thing you do when you wake up? Do you reach for your phone? There's a better way! Let me share my morning routine as a reiki master...
So you started a blog... now what?! There are a few things that you need to do your first-month blogging to set your blog up for success!
I have been meaning to do a post on Jin Shin Jyutsu for over a year now…..ever since I first started studying and practicing this wonderfully simple, yet complex, “Art of Learning To Kn…
Did you know that sometimes ADHD and stealing go hand in hand - find out more and what you can do about it on site now.
From when to expect common pregnancy symptoms to what to avoid, here's everything you need to know about your first trimester of pregnancy by week.
You've written a first draft, but now it's time for editing your novel. Here are tips and resources to help you so you don't hate your life while editing.
Touch is an electrifying thriller by the author of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and 84K. He tried to take my life. Instead, I took his. It was a long time ago. I remember it was dark, and I didn't see my killer until it was too late. As I died, my hand touched his. That's when the first switch took place. Suddenly, I was looking through the eyes of my killer, and I was watching myself die. Now switching is easy. I can jump from body to body, have any life, be anyone. Some people touch lives. Others take them. I do both. More by Claire North:The Gameshouse84KThe End of the DayThe Sudden Appearance of HopeTouchThe First Fifteen Lives of Harry August | Author: Claire North | Publisher: Redhook | Publication Date: Aug 04, 2015 | Number of Pages: 448 pages | Language: English | Binding: Paperback | ISBN-10: 0316335916 | ISBN-13: 9780316335911
I outline how I collect and use Kindergarten documentation. Set yourself and your students up for success with a simple and easy way to document!
Are you expecting? Want pregnancy care tips? Here are the 10 things to do when you are pregnant! Take your vitamins, eat healthy and more. Take an extra care!
So. You’ve done it. You had an idea, then sat down and did the work to turn it into an actual story. You wrote a first draft! Now what? Finishing a first draft, especially if it’s your first first draft, can seem like a daunting task, so that when it’s finally over, many writers are left wondering what to do next. Can you submit it to agents? Should you start editing it immediately? Why not send it out to all my friends and family to read? To help you navigate the exciting but murky time post-first draft, I’ve got some simple steps of what to do next. In the coming weeks, I’ll dig deeper into many of these aspects to give you a better picture of what to do with the story you’ve just written. While everyone has their own process and what you do with your first draft is totally up to you, there is a basic structure of what to do that seems to work best for most writers. 1. Take a break This is an important step! You might be totally burnt out on your project after pushing through to the finish, and taking a break sounds great. Or maybe you’re itching to dive back into your novel and start editing. Either way, you need to put it aside for the moment. Taking a break from your manuscript allows you to come back to it with fresh eyes and renewed creative energy. If you start editing it ten minutes after you finished it, it’s going to be much harder to be unbiased about what your novel actually needs. Letting your manuscript breathe for a little bit is the best thing you can do to gain the objectivity necessary to edit it. How long your break should be depends on you. I took a month off when I finished my first draft. Some people recommend several months; others say just a couple weeks is enough. Ultimately, it should be however long it takes you to let the story fade a little bit in your mind (allowing you to approach it with fresh eyes) and for you to get excited again about working on it (particularly if you were feeling burnt out before). But just because you’re taking a break from your manuscript doesn’t mean you have to take a break from writing! You might need to, and that’s fine. Read a book or watch a well-written TV show. If you’re still feeling that urge to write, work on another project. In my month-long break, I read fiction books in the same genre as my work-in-progress, and wrote a short story. Do whatever you need to do to keep growing your skills and refill your creative well. 2. The Read-Through Once you’ve taken some time off from your book, it’s time to start editing. Again, the process will vary from writer to writer, but there is a general path that most people would tell you makes the most sense. The first step in this path is to just read through your novel, beginning to end. Do your best not to make any edits (though I couldn’t resist fixing typos and simple grammar mistakes when I did my read-through!), and instead just read your book like it’s the first time you’re seeing it. Instead of changing things as you read, make a list of all the edits you’d like to make. Once you finish reading and taking notes, organize that list from the biggest changes to smallest. The reason for this is that you don’t want to spend forever tweaking the descriptions on one scene, only to end up cutting it later. This will probably happen at some point anyway, but organizing your edits in this way will at least prevent some of this. 3. The Macro-Edit Now that you know what you want to fix, it’s time to dive into the edits. The first rounds of editing should be focused on the big stuff. As I mentioned earlier, this is to cut back on the amount of times you fix the details of a scene and then later delete the thing altogether. In the macro-edit, you’re looking for big picture issues like plot, characters, and theme. Do the character arcs make sense? How is the pacing of the plot? Does the theme tie it all together? If you’re an outliner who did a lot of prep work before writing, this edit may not take you as long, since you hopefully planned out a lot of these things beforehand, and were able to smoothly incorporate them as you wrote. If you’re not a planner and just wrote freely to see where the story takes you (or if you’re a plotter who didn’t actually plot very well like me…), then this stage might take longer. Neither way is right or wrong! It’s just a matter of figuring out what works best with your process and how to support whatever weaknesses you may have. 4. Finding beta readers This step doesn’t necessarily come after you’ve completely finished macro-edits. Each type of edit will take you several rounds (each round creates a new draft) and so somewhere in the midst of your macro-editing rounds, you’ll want to find other people to take a look at your draft. At this point, you’re looking more for people with writing skill and an eye for editing, not just the average reader. You want them to be able to critique your work (without being too harsh, of course) so that you can know where it gets boring, when the characters don’t make sense, which scenes are unnecessary, etc. No matter how many times you read your work or how long you try to take a break from it, you can’t be completely unbiased, so it’s important to bring in other people to give you their opinions as well. You’ll also want to bring them back in some time during the next phase of edits to help you find smaller details to correct. 5. The Micro-Edit Once you feel pretty confident that all the big stuff in your novel is ironed out, it’s time to wade into the weeds with the micro-edit. This involves going through your manuscript line by line to make sure every sentence is as polished and strong as it can be. You’ll need to ask questions like would this character use this word, can this verb be stronger, should this be in active voice instead of passive, etc. Keep an eye out for any “weasel words” of yours—these are words that you personally tend to overuse—or any other bad habits you know you slip into (I too frequently start dialogue with “Well…”). I won’t lie to you: it’s a long process. And it’s not one you can rush. But I sort of enjoy it, as it feels like I’m truly polishing my draft into something that is shiny and book-like. The micro-edit will again take several passes through your manuscript, but after that point it should feel pretty solid, and maybe even ready to start sending to agents. That’s a whole other round of posts, and I’m sure I’ll do them once I start querying agents! But it takes a while to get to that point—I finished my first draft in May 2018, and if things go to plan, I’ll finish my last round of micro edits June of this year. Revision may not be your favorite part of the book writing process, but it is a crucial part to make sure your story is the very best it can be. Have you finished a first draft? What is your method for editing and moving forward? Let me know in the comments! If you liked this article, pin it to share it and save for later! Featured image by Mikhail Pavstyuk
Survive and get through the first trimester with ease with these first trimester must haves
Decode the mixed signals in relationships with men. Gain proven strategies and learn what to do when a guy contacts, talks to you, and then ignores you.
Become a behavior management expert! This post explains what behavior is, how it shows up in our classrooms, and how to change it!
The viral whisper method is the latest easy and effective manifestation technique. Here's how it works: 1. Decide what is it that you want...
Starting your reiki practice. Helpful tips and ideas for reiki students on how to start your reiki practice
