Blogger has some new skins and this marbled fuchsia is so full of energy it's inspired me to actually blog.
Updates!!
Still plugging away on Zane. (Nope, haven't named the sucker yet, no idea there) It's been going slooowwly, but it has been going. I finally hit the 50K halfway point over the weekend. I'm at 46K revised words and 52K total. I've just started revisions on chapter ten.
I can honestly say this book has been a very interesting experience. I've broken all my normal writing patterns. For one thing I never plotted this book, never figured out the characters, which is one of the reasons its going so slow. I thought I had enough figured out after chapter five to fly forward.. I mean I knew what was going to happen toward the end, I just had to get them there, right?
Ha, that meant chapters of NOTHINGNESS to fill. So I'd finish a chapter and then have to figure out where I was going from there, which meant days of mulling time while I worked things out. Which naturally lead to worrying that the scenes I was filling the nothingness with, were...well...boring. So I did some extensive brainstorming and came up with another threat that pulls my characters through the middle & provides constant action right up until the shit starts flying toward the end.
Of course adding this element meant going back through the previous chapters and layering the foreshadowing through. Which ties into another reason this book has been so slow going. There's been alot of going back and layering things through. It feels like I'm constantly going back and layering stuff in; foreshadowing, character GMC, hints of back story, secondary characters that just show up out of nowhere, plot twists that need to be at least hinted at earlier.
Interestingly, several of the twists and turns were hinted at earlier, I just didn't pick up on them or know quite why they were in there. For example secondary characters reacting in ways they really shouldn't have. Or characters who show up in the beginning under one guise and I don't know until five chapters later that they weren't at all who I thought they were. Or dialogue that is echoed and twisted later.
The other big difference with this book, in comparison to my last ones, is that I didn't just hammer out a first draft and then go back and revise. Instead, for the first time ever, I've been writing the chapter then immediately going back and revising/polishing/ tweaking, sending it off to my CPs and then revising again as soon as I get their feedback. If something needs to be added, or subtracted, or changed, I do so as soon as I realize it. This means the first nine chapters are solid, revised and polished. After the book's finished there will be one quick edit just to catch anything that was missed, and then it should be ready for submission.
Now that the book's been fully plotted, and the characters have been figured out, and all the foreshadowing and GMC has been layered through, I'm hoping I can pick the pace up. I'd really like to have this out on subs by October first.
Not that I'll have any time to lazy around, there are three secondary heroes in Zane who are demanding their own books. So I am going to be a busy girl.
Now you know what it's like for me. I feel that my unconscious mind must be plotting to drop in those hints and tidbits that fit the twists and turns.
ReplyDeleteYour new background is great. It practically vibrates! Have fun writing the last half!
Finding all those hints and tidbits is the biggest surprise to me on this book. It just amazes me how a character or dialogue or a plot point you throw in there to serve one purpose in the beginning, suddenly takes on additional importance further down the road.
ReplyDeleteSince I didn't even know that scene was going to be there further down the road, it just amazes me that it ties into something brought up earlier.
You must be a into-the-mist- writer. Well, my hat's off to you. Too many of these kinds of books and they just might drive me crazy.
Doncha hate when things get stalled? That happens far too often to me. However, there are always ways to pull yourself out of it. Good luck.
ReplyDeleteIt feels like I am constantly getting stalled with this book, then revving up again- only to get stalled once again.
ReplyDeleteThe original plan had been to work on my other WIP if I got stalled on this, but that just never seemed to happen.
lol
I'm with you, Trish, but for the opposite reason. I normally pants big time but have had to slow down my current WIP to take the time to plot it out more. But I also have found that I, like Edie said, somehow sneaked in bits a sub-layer/foreshadowing that I didn't realize!
ReplyDeleteThe earlier layering and foreshadowing has been what surprised me the most about this book, too.
ReplyDeleteOur subconscious must know where we are headed, even if our conscious minds don't. I have this secondary character right now who is absolutely furious inside, like a seething volcano. At first everyone kept asking me why he was so angry about everything. And..well...I didn't have a clue. The other characters were completely aware of it, but they just accepted and ignored it.
But when I'd try to go in and tweak him back, make him stern or forbidding rather than furious, all his scenes just flattened out. Lost all life and tension.
So I let him go and the other characters started dropping hints as to why he is like this--and then BOOM, he does something that wouldn't have worked at ALL, without all those earlier scenes building this anger and aggression. But because his temperament had been layered through previously, Not one CP even blinked at it.
And yeah, I finally found out what's at the core of his fury, and what he has to do to excise it--even though none of that has made it into the book yet.