Swimming Pools

I finished the paper edit of the third story today. I'm delighted...

...but the story needs a complete rewrite! (arrghh) I did plan the first draft, but half-way through I changed my mind and went another direction. The result is a little weird. Characters change their entire personality at the turn of a page. The dialogue ranges from robotic to flirtatious. And there are several plot holes the size of swimming pools.

But it's all good as it's part of the magical process of novel writing. I can understand why I struggled the first time around. The story's premise and setting are challenging and the characters need to develop and change over a short amount of time.

A full rewrite rather than an edit means that it'll probably take me a week and a half to finish, as I have to concentrate on quality rather than quantity at this point. Tomorrow I'll spend some time planning the story scene by scene and iron out any bumps.

Oh, and happy May Day everyone!

Research

I'm back in business - amazing how much you can get done if you've been bored out of your skull for a week! My hand was a blur, scribbling down ideas, twists, motivations, descriptions...

My fingers are now too sore to continue so I'm off to do some research. I've made up a new vocabulary for this story - it's set in a cult-like community so they'll have their own terminology for certain things - but I want it to have more resonance, so I'm going to look up some biblical and religious references.

Have a lot of paperwork and administration stuff to sort out too - so I'm keeping busy.

Brainwaves

I finished the paper edit/rewrite of my second story yesterday - changed quite a few things, but haven't cut everything thankfully.

So now to the laptop part. This takes much longer as I often just note directions on paper rather than the specific wording. Also as I work through the hard copy I'll often have a brainwave about a character or a scene that needs to come before, so I'll go back scribble a note like: "Andrew has OCD!!!" or "Eamon needs to mention something to Andrew here to stop him from telling Sophia" which often scraps what I'd already written previously.

But it's all good. I'm happy that I've eroded the plot holes at this stage (at least the ones I've spotted) and have improved the story and the flow. God bless Sol Stein. I made notes when I read Solutions for Writers and I go over them again before each edit. His advice is slowly but surely invading my fuzzy, bubble-wrapped brain.

History's Finest

Started my paper edit of story number two and managed ten pages. Hand is a wreck but heart is soaring.

So I'm almost out of my daily word allocation...but before I snuggle up with the tv remote, I thought you might be interested in an article The Ours sent me.

I'd been feeling guilty about only managing to write four hours a day on average, but thanks to my fella's thoughtfulness I now know that my habits mirror history's finest.

(Yes! Procrastination, lazing about and daydreaming DOES make you a genius!)