In my life, I’m usually trying to minimize the conflict. But in my writing, I need to add more.
Someone gave feedback on the entire novel of ‘The Shortest Route’ and was very polite. She identified a number of typos, and said she had plot feedback as well but since it was a polished work, perhaps I didn’t want that feedback. I said, “Bring it on!” Bottom line, the first one hundred pages need more conflict. I agree. So, it needs two scenes near the beginning, written in such a way as to not mess up the rest of the book. Not an easy task.
Since the first draft of ‘The Shortest Route’ was written by Barry Glicklich, I’m thinking he could draft the two new scenes. We have an agreement. He doesn’t have to edit. But, adding a scene isn’t editing. It’s more first-draft writing. Although he thinks it falls under editing. Oh, good, I found the conflict. Oh, wait, that’s in life, not writing. Bummer.
Starting off a Monday morning by discovering that one of my main email accounts had been hacked into at 3:20 in the morning was not the best way to have a productive start to the week. On the plus side, I got rid of a bunch of other less-secure passwords for a number of sites. When I took a walk in the forest preserve to clear my head, I had a bunch of ideas for my November novel. Evidently resetting passwords stokes my creative fires.
Today life gets back to ‘more normal’ with the departure of my youngest for school. Normal is difficult to define, made more so by my no longer having a job in telecommunications. The adjustment was more difficult than I expected, and continues. After years of hanging on by my fingernails, I’d expected to feel relieved to be done, not to mention the increasingly ridiculous teleconferences. But I miss being employed, and not just for the money. I miss being able to state what I did when being introduced to people. I’d expected to be proud to state that I’m a writer, but I preferred when I could say I wrote fiction in addition to creating web-based classes on cellular technology. I liked it when the people who asked about my fiction writing were curious, not just polite.
I need to get better at marketing. When I was employed, I told myself that I’d worry about marketing ‘when I didn’t have a day job.’ Well, it’s time to worry about that. Luckily, most of writing is stuff that I really enjoy, like getting the idea down, then refining it, and refining and refining. I also love reading books on writing (and even marketing), and giving and receiving feedback on writing. And I have a solid plan for what I’m producing. I released ‘Yes, But–‘ and ‘Sparks’ in 2012, and already had ‘Yes, And…’ self-published. My goal for 2013 is to release ‘Making Family’ and ‘French Impressions’ and possibly ‘Shortest Route.’ And to make progress on several other books including the new one.
My husband gave me a quizzical look when I said I spent several hours today working on the ‘wrong novel.’ How can working on one of my novels be wrong?
An online friend on critique circle finished ‘Too Close for Comfort’ and really liked the second half, but had a hard time connecting with the character in the first half. I asked her what would improve it, and tossed out a couple of suggestions that I had from a previous reader such as making things worse for the main character. She thought things didn’t need to be worse, but she hadn’t liked the character until about half way through.
As a side note, because we’re all authors, people on critique circle will read something that we wouldn’t tolerate in a published novel. We get enjoyment out of helping make books better and realize that means that we sometimes read things that are, well, boring, or don’t resonate, but if we can help the author makes it better, it’s worth while. We learn a lot in doing this as well.
I had what I think is a pretty good idea about how to make the character more likeable, which involved revealing more of her back-story that I knew, but hadn’t provided in the book. And I could even do it in a scene in real-time, without needing a flashback. Cool. Fun to work on. The problem is I have two other novels that I intend to publish before this one. ‘The Shortest Route’ still needs half a scene for chapter one, and ‘French Impressions’ is the one I’m currently trying to revise 2-3 chapters a day. So, I told myself I can do a little work, but kept referring to it as the ‘wrong’ novel, so I don’t get caught up in revising it. I know me, I wouldn’t let up on my goals for the other two and there are only so many hours in a day.
Now, if I can just add one more scene to the ‘wrong’ novel, maybe I can get back to working on the right ones.