Ann Marie Gamble

Lucky 7

Sunday, April 8th, 2012

The meme:
The Lucky Sevens Game:

• Open the document for your current MS/WIP
• Go to page 77
• Go to line 7
• Copy the next 7 lines (sentences or paragraphs) and post them exactly as they are written. No changing or cheating!
• Tag 7 authors and let them know.

Okay, Jenn Spiller–you . . . you tagger, you–I thought I was off the hook because I’d lost the log-in info for my blog and my webmaster is on a week-long silent Zen retreat (damn these helpful support files). My next resisting strategy was legalism: which manuscript is my current WIP? The draft or the current revision? Double-spaced manuscript or raw text?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Seven lines from Rite of Return: (more…)

Follow

Share on Tumblr

Posted in Blogging, Process, Rite of Return, Writing | 1 Comment »

The First Irish Draft Is Finished

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

Now what?

It’s a shambling bramble patch of a draft, but the novel formerly known as “Irish Roots” has now been written through to the end. It’s about 100,000 words, prints out as 350 pages. I’ve been working on it since February 2008. I was boosted in my efforts by two workshops and a local gang of scribblers we call the Brain Trust. They helped me jettison “Irish Roots” for “Rite of Return” as a title.

Specifically, I have no idea what I’m going to do now beyond setting it aside for a while. I’ve been slingshotting between elation (I iz Novelist!!) and despair (the hero and heroine don’t explicitly declare their love for each other, I have yet to name several secondary characters . . .). (more…)

Follow

Share on Tumblr

Posted in Process, Rite of Return, Writing | 5 Comments »

Convergence

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

This is a sample of columnular basalt in the Field Museum in Chicago:

The famous place I’ve heard of this formation is the Giant’s Causeway, a cliff on the northern coast of Ireland. There’s a geological explanation and a legendary one, a tale I enjoy because the hero actually dodges the issue and defeats the villain with a trick instead of a fight. In Rite of Return the hero and heroine end up at Giant’s Causeway at a moment when the heroine is questioning why she’s in the country. It was a scene that took me a long time to write, and I did a lot of staring at photos of columnular basalt while I was trying to do it. (more…)

Follow

Share on Tumblr

Posted in Creativity, Rite of Return, Travel | 1 Comment »