April is here, and I’ve put aside my editing and started writing again. It feels good.
Much of my preexisting writing—little scenes which I’ve scribbled down over the years—won’t work anymore due to plot changes and must be rewritten from scratch. A couple can be salvaged, such as Nicholas’s acceptance of when he first became a guardian, but everything else is getting scrapped.
The original idea behind Rise of the Teymir, now called Isto, was a man vs environment and man vs situation, with no actual villain other than illness and consequence. I decided I didn’t like it and started throwing in random mysteries last November. With a plan now in place, I’ve defined my villains (yes plural).
I’ve reached 4200 and I’m still trucking. I had thought I might not make it to 50K this month. Being pregnant makes me want to sleep through my writing time rather than wake up. But once the words start flowing, there seems to be no stop.
Life seems to be back under control. My daughter is thoroughly enjoying her new daycare, speech therapy is scheduled, no more dentist appointments, only one doctor’s appointment, and no interviews. I’ve put down reading The Passage by Justin Cronin because the story slowed back to a crawl in chapter 18 with a new cast of characters and world-building all over again. Not to mention actually reading The Passage brings to light all the past-progressive verb forms which could have been changed for cleaner, tighter writing. (ah the curse of editing mode!)
Instead, I’ve started listening The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (45 hours?!). I’ve been jumping around the map lately from Heat Wave to The Time Traveler’s Wife to On a Pale Horse. I plan to pick up Patricia Brigg’s Frost Burn, and have added Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz to my library list.
On the nonfiction side of things, I’ve started reading Writing the Breakout Novel. I could tell in the first chapter that it’s a little dated when it talked about the e-revolution and how it might not happen, but so far the advice has been interesting. I did get a warm fuzzy when it used Outlander by Diana Gabaldon as an example of a breakout novel. And I found it rather refreshing when it said breakout novels are usually longer, due to complexity of premise, characters, plot, etc. I’m only on chapter 2, so I don’t have much to pass on, but when I finish it, I’ll be sure to report.