I haven't posted much since coming back from vacation. I'd intended to write while spending a week journeying out to Florida and back, but I got to the hotel in Georgia (we stayed in Buford so I could go to Babyland General - home of the Cabbage Patch Kids) and discovered I'd forgotten one vital piece of equipment necessary to ensure I'd write during the trip - my laptop power cord. :P
And you know, a friend warned me about bringing proper cords not even a few days before. Well, I had cords for everything else, just not the one for my laptop. That gave me a grand total of 3 hours battery time to space out over a week. Yipes! I ended up using the laptop to send in quick emails while in Florida, but that was all the computer time I saw.
Even after a week at home, I've still been having trouble getting back into the swing of things. I thought I'd have to get my crit partner to take a whip to me, but then through one of my RWA loops, I found a quote from Nora Roberts that in a nutshell says: You can edit a really bad manuscript; you can't edit a blank page.
Well, that sort of gave me the wake up slap. Thanks, I needed that... Remember those commercials? Anyway, it was enough to make me settle down over the weekened while hubby was home, and break out my Nocturne Bite that I finished, but didn't like very much.
I reread through it, and really it's not bad. Not nearly as bad as I thought. It even has a little bit of mystery mixed in with it, and I'm kind of excited about that, because I've never incorporated that into any of my work.
The story needs a thorough clean up, of course, all my stories have to have that before submission. (I typically do 3 drafts.) But what I discovered while reading it this time was - the plot holes! The black holes that were making this story fall apart, and the mysterious reason I'd pull the wip out and go, "Arg... I do NOT want to work on this anymore."
It turns out the story is missing two scenes, with those, it will smooth out the story and tie up all the loose ends. Talk about an epiphany! I sat back after reading it on Saturday and wondered, why didn't I spot that before?
I can't remember where I read it, probably from a writing guide I'd once picked up from the library, but at some point I read that when you write "the end" to your rough draft, you should always put it aside for a few days, a week, even a month, before going back to work on it again.
I've always turned my nose up to that rule. I'll admit it. It's my story and I'll work on it if I want to - neener, neener - and all that. 0:P Well I think I've learned a valuable lesson in all this. Sometimes it does help to step back from a project and come back to it with a fresh perspective days, even weeks, later. I don't mean to stop writing, but to hide your wip from yourself for a few days if a story isn't going right.
Last night I stayed up and wrote 1 of those two missing scenes, and that closed one huge plot gap. Hurray! Today I plan to write the second scene, and do a print up so I can start editing. Woot! My Nocturne Bite is well on the way to real completion this time - not just being finished, as I thought it was before - but ready to be cleaned up for submission. Hopefully, by next week at the latest, I'll have my Bite ready to send in!
Live, love, write...
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