Saturday, November 25, 2006
On Writing. And Stuff
Two really great blog posts today (I mean besides this one) about the business of writing:
MaryJanice Davidson's post over on
MagicalMusings.com. Go read that.
Then read what
Tess Gerritson has to say about essentially the same thing.
Interesting stuff. You need to do both things to succeed in this business. Persevere and continually strive to improve.
I did the paper read through of Scandal. I have good news and bad news. Keeping the two posts above in mind, see if you can figure out which is which: I got through chapters 1-3 without doing massive surgery. Chapter 2 needs some of the same thing I did to chapter 1 last time around, which is invest more of my heroine in it. Not surprising, since I only recently rewrote this from her point of view. I even got through chapter 4 (with massive edits) but when I got to chapter 5 I realized chapter 4 needs to be deleted.
Sigh. Chapter 5 was surprisingly interesting. Chapter 6 may also need to be deleted. Or else something else entirely needs to happen. I think it's something else entirely. There's not enough at stake in the chapter. Chapter 7 may be OK, but it needs work. Understandable since it's not a chapter I've gotten to very often lately, and I recently did a massive shift on that chapter so it's rough. On page 65 of chapter 8 I wrote the word
boring and then stopped and went shopping. Then I got my hair done. (Why, yes, I do look glamorous!) Then I came home and started entering in the paper edits -- there's no point in looking at the rest of the paper stuff until I fix and/or delete these other chapters. There were more than a couple but fewer than several spots where I felt like I was in my hero's head for real. And I have no idea how I did that, except by doing this -- writing and editing and writing and writing and deleting and starting over and writing and editing ad infinitum, it sometimes seems.
So, what's the good news and the bad news? Hah. Trick question. The real answer is all of it is good news. I know what has to go, what needs to stay, what needs work, and there are places where it's my voice in full.
If you read this blog at all, you know I've been working on Scandal for a really long time, that two other books have been published since I started on this freaking story, and that two others have sold since then, too. I haven't given up because I believe in the story. And I know I have to work like a dog on my writing. For every book. Every time. Even though my books get published (so far).
