Tomorrow "Last Man Standing" heads off to Cemetery Dance Magazine. Fingers crossed!
And you know that YA book I yammer about from time to time? The one I tried to write without an outline? Yeah, I'm scraping it and starting over with an outline this time. Ken (also known as The Idea Man) gave me a few suggestions, and with some of the material I have, I think this next draft is going to rock hard. I'm keeping some stuff, taking a lot out, changing a few things ... it's going to be good. I've worked on the outline for the past few days--I'll continue to mess with it, I'm sure--and last night I wrote the first chapter. It's actually more of a prologue than a chapter but what the hell. The last book jumped around to four different characters. While I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, I felt like I didn't really get to know any of the characters. Also, the first time I had it in my head this was Max's story, but it's really Zoey's, I think. There will be a few chapters from Max's POV to deepen the intrigue and mystery, but mostly it's going to be from Zoey's POV. I'm bummed about losing this one scene from Tasha's POV--she lives in a trailer and her mom earns money working as a medium--and it showed her angst and bitterness and kept with the theme of "you can't deny who you are," but I'm consoling myself by saying the next book in the series (!) will be from Tasha's POV.
Can you tell I'm a little excited about this story again? My goal is to have a finished, polished draft by June 1st so I can begin the agent querying process. Fingers crossed!
7 comments:
Yay!! Sounds like you're inspired! Good luck with it!
yeah it's great to see you so pumped! DO IT! GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO!
go.
Nice, X. Yeah, I hate losing those awesome scenes--awesome is like catnip for the writer's brain, and we get addicted to it. But I've had to learn that we have to step back from sniffing the awesome and see if theawesome is also good for the story--and in some cases, it isn't the best way for the story to go.
It's okay. We can just cut out the awesome and save it as a seperate document. That way we can go back and roll in the awesome when no one's looking.
Hey Kelly, great to see you excited about working on it. Great to see you not just scrap it as well.
I understand what you are experiencing with too many characters sharing the limelight. I have the same problem with a story I've been working on for a while. If only my ideas could be transferred from my head to paper without having to be translated by me in the process. :)
OK - you know I don't know anything about writing. But I'm wondering...What if the way you have the story in your head is the way it should be written, as opposed to someone else's ideas? About how many authors do you say - how do they come up with this stuff? Anyway, just a thought from someone with no right brain.
I'm glad you're on a roll again! You go girl!
Bridgey: What I mean is this. Even if I write a narrative exactly the way it is in my head without input from anyone--meaning first A happens, then B happens, and some really cool C happens--what's on paper will still pale in comparison to what's in my head. Part of the reason is that when anyone reads a story, only about half of what they read is on paper--meaning, there's the words on the page and then the stuff you make up in your head to fill in what the author left out. So anytime I write anything, it's hard for me to imagine what you, the reader, will imagine when you read what I wrote. I feel like my writing isn't as rich or complex as what's in my head ... and it pushes me to keep writing, keep practicing, keep creating until I get as close as I can get. Does any of that make sense?
Sean: rolling in the awesome is excellent.
Rob: I know exactly what you mean. See my above post to Bridgey.
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