It's been a while since I made a blog post, so I'll create a few today. For one, when I'm writing a Facebook post and it starts to look like a blog post, I realize I probably want to write on my blog. Also, I need to post a review of the other book I read via Netgalley so that they might give me more someday, LOL. And I had a draft post that I'd still like to publish, so that will happen, too. So, here we go...
Yet another gross weather day, which is fine. Nasty weather lends itself well to writing, especially in the coziness of my house with the woodstove running. And I have a lot of writing on my plate - #NaNoWriMo, on which I'm still behind; a marketing project (again); a marketing mid-term makeup (that I must kick butt on, since I got spanked on the exam itself); a project to polish for Pitch Wars; and edits for Only One. Yep, that's on top of the list of regular life stuff, plus I'm going to see Catching Fire tomorrow.
I finally finished the major changes to my latest draft of Only One. Did I say this on my blog or just on Facebook? I can't recall. Either way, I said that my muse smacked me around a bit and told me that I was going to make some plot changes for Only One, whether I liked it or not. I'd had a discussion with Laurie (for those of you who don't know, my mentor is author Laurie Breton) after my last draft review and she made a good point about where the story should end. Since I wanted it to end at a certain point, I had to make the rest of the story work toward that. And one major issue was making it...difficult to see why the story should continue after a certain point. So, I made a minor tweak to the plot. Nothing crazy, just changed the timing of an event.
Oh? Did I say nothing crazy? Okay, I lied. I mean, the plot change really wasn't crazy and it makes the story so much better. But once I did that, I had to make some big adjustments to the story to reflect it. Along the way, I came to a couple other realizations about character motivation and BLAM! The story was blown wide open. Questions I hadn't even considered before (but should have) needed to be answered, new scenes were written. On top of all that, I'd been restructuring the manuscript to reflect a more chronological approach, which allowed me to answer those questions and simultaneously enrich the story. More conflict, layers of the characters that were there but not shown well, these things appeared as I made the changes. Best of all? I didn't set out to give an explanation for something in Back to December, but I realized today that anyone who has read both stories will hopefully appreciate the information.
Now, I'm going back through to make sure my changes on Only One are consistent. I'm hoping to finish today. As you can see, I haven't been writing on NaNo, but I have been writing. I still have 8 days to finish my last 16k for NaNo, and for me, that isn't as big a challenge as it might be for others. I tend to write a lot. But I really wanted to get Only One out for a holiday release, and if I don't get the latest draft ready for review, then it won't be possible. Book 2 takes precedence over Book 4. If I can manage to actually finish Book 4, maybe it can be my Pitch Wars submission. I don't know; I was thinking I didn't need a 100% finished manuscript, but I guess I do. *shrug* We'll see; this might not be the year to do it. Maybe next year will be better. My class has to take priority, since it is being graded.
I'll post two more blog posts, one of which will be a review for Temptation Bay by Anna Sullivan. The other is about writing. Enjoy! And wish me luck getting that To-Do list done...
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