Bits of Fun, Images and Artwork

Word Cloud: Give Way to Night

Now that I’ve handed in copy edits, Give Way to Night is… pretty much done and dusted! The only thing left will be page proofs, and really all I can change there will be minor typos. This is, as you might imagine, simultaneously extremely gratifying and sort of terrifying. Letting go of a book can be a hard step for an author, because it requires a lot of faith in oneself. For a book I’ve been wrangling with as long as this one (thanks, Curse of Book Two), it’s especially difficult. But I have to remember: I have written the book I wanted to write. That has to be enough. Time to let it go and focus on the next one.

It being done, though, means it’s time for a new word cloud! I don’t think it’s wildly dissimilar from the last version, but there might be a few minor variations in which words are more prominent.

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Have any thoughts on this word cloud? Anything about it make you excited? Or scared? ;D Let me know!

Images and Artwork

Word Cloud — Aven Cycle Book Two, Revised

Word Art

I turned in a new draft of Aven Cycle Book Two to my editor last week! And, as is traditional, I made a word cloud for it. The five most-often-used words in this draft (apart from articles and pronouns and such) are: Latona, Sempronius, Vibia, magic, more.

I’m glad to have this draft turned in, and I’m eager to hear what my editor thinks. The changes in this draft feel solid. The sequence of events is better paced, and the ending is a lot more emotionally-driven. It still needs some work, to be sure, but it feels like now that work can be polishing and smoothing, not full-on chiseling.

Bits of Fun

Word cloud for the June 2016 revisions

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Bits of Fun, Images and Artwork

Word Cloud for the Current Draft

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Images and Artwork

New Draft, New Word Cloud

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Bits of Fun, Images and Artwork

Word Clouds for ‘Aven’ Manuscript

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Draft #3

I love word clouds. There’s just something mesmerizing about them, and they can be so weirdly artistic, too. I got sort of addicted to them at work, actually, because we use them for various teaching purposes. I’ve done them for Aven three times now: once right after I finished the first draft, once after I’d done quite a lot of revisions, before I started querying, and now a third time, with the new round of additions and adjustments. It doesn’t change a lot — but I do like seeing what subtle shifts there are. Some characters come into greater prominence. Some ideas grow larger or smaller. Like I said: mesmerizing.

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Draft #2
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Draft #1