Just Checking In

I haven't been writing much lately. We've been very busy at the house.
My son and I took three days and cleaned our outside storage building.
It was such a mess! Birds try to build huge nests inside, but we manage to stop them before they lay any eggs. You would think they were eagles with all the mess they make.
That's what started our cleaning spree, taking out remnants of a nest. My son does wood working in the building and he hadn't cleaned it up since making my other son and his bride a cedar chest for their wedding present.

We are getting carpet in our bedroom today. We spent hours and hours last night moving everything out of the room. In addition to the heavy, solid wood furniture, the clutter was the hardest thing to remove. We slept on our mattress in the floor last night.

I have been working on one of my picture books.
I finally figured out how to write it the way publishers want picture books to be. I really cleaned it up and took out the descriptions that I loved. It's the one about scarecrows and I described each one to a tee. Well, you're not supposed to do that, you're supposed to leave that up to the illustrator.
It finally sunk into my hard head and I figured out a way to re write it. I left out the descriptions and started it with action! It is so much better now and I have submitted it to a publisher.
But, I sent it a few months ago to a writing contest before I made the changes. Wish I could resend it, but alas, it's too late for that.

I love the story and I'm glad I finally figured out how to word it right.

It's one of the hardest things for writers to do.
Get rid of those words we love.
But, it's one of the best things we can do for a story.
Cut and slash words if they are not needed!