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Days 6 and 7 of the Year-End Project
Dec. 26th, 2012 08:46 amInternet continues to be unreliable. Cranky writer is cranky, as there's stuff I need to research/sites I need to check...
Day 6
Realized that where I’d opened chapter three was utterly and absolutely WRONG. *sigh* It’s a lovely scene, a perfect scene perhaps, and it does all the things I wanted it to do, but it asks the readers to take too much of a leap on faith, and I haven’t earned that faith yet.
New opening line: The almanac might say Spring, but Winter kept its fingers wrapped around the Midwest.
So there, I’ve given the reader an idea of how much time has passed, and reminded us where we are, and also set the scene for how the POV character will be reacting (to the unexpected cold).
And, nearly 3000 words into the chapter, after reading my beta-readers’ notes and seeing a number of different comments on the same section – nobody had the same point to make but they all know something wasn’t right - I realize that I’d totally screwed the pooch on one of the subthemes. So fixing that - unwinding the threads and then sorting and reweaving them into the existing pattern – took most of the day. Brain, tired.
Best typo: “raising the ice book.” It took me a while to figure out that was supposed to be “raiding the ice box.”
Day 7:
Ok, it was Christmas and therefore the annual tradition of the Sibling Lunch (wherein my mother and her sisters and brother and all the family within reach descend upon one of our favorite and most tolerant Chinese restaurants and take over the entire back for several hours.) So… only a few hours of work, most of which were spent agonizing over an incredibly important speech a secondary character gives that puts the ENTIRE BOOK in motion.
That speech gives me ulcers. I killed a lot of darlings, changed the emphasis, and made the speaker far more of an intentional trigger. I’m still not sure it works. But it works better that it did before.
And I’m in negative numbers for the day. Oh well.
Approximately 20,000 words revised/fine-tuned/rewritten so far.
Day 6
Realized that where I’d opened chapter three was utterly and absolutely WRONG. *sigh* It’s a lovely scene, a perfect scene perhaps, and it does all the things I wanted it to do, but it asks the readers to take too much of a leap on faith, and I haven’t earned that faith yet.
New opening line: The almanac might say Spring, but Winter kept its fingers wrapped around the Midwest.
So there, I’ve given the reader an idea of how much time has passed, and reminded us where we are, and also set the scene for how the POV character will be reacting (to the unexpected cold).
And, nearly 3000 words into the chapter, after reading my beta-readers’ notes and seeing a number of different comments on the same section – nobody had the same point to make but they all know something wasn’t right - I realize that I’d totally screwed the pooch on one of the subthemes. So fixing that - unwinding the threads and then sorting and reweaving them into the existing pattern – took most of the day. Brain, tired.
Best typo: “raising the ice book.” It took me a while to figure out that was supposed to be “raiding the ice box.”
Day 7:
Ok, it was Christmas and therefore the annual tradition of the Sibling Lunch (wherein my mother and her sisters and brother and all the family within reach descend upon one of our favorite and most tolerant Chinese restaurants and take over the entire back for several hours.) So… only a few hours of work, most of which were spent agonizing over an incredibly important speech a secondary character gives that puts the ENTIRE BOOK in motion.
That speech gives me ulcers. I killed a lot of darlings, changed the emphasis, and made the speaker far more of an intentional trigger. I’m still not sure it works. But it works better that it did before.
And I’m in negative numbers for the day. Oh well.
Approximately 20,000 words revised/fine-tuned/rewritten so far.
