Wednesday, June 03, 2009

When Last We Left Off...






















I was promising to be a better blogger.

Guess that didn't quite work out as I had hoped, eh?

Well, first, my finger's feeling a LOT better. Did I blog about how I dislocated my let index finger (but didn't know that's what I'd done at first), then popped it back into the socket? Well, if I did, it's just about 100%. If I didn't, now you know and it's still just about 100%.

Angel of Darkness is still stalled. However, I revised the first draft of Devil in Disguise. I'm in the midst of making the hard copy changes to the second draft on my laptop -but it's very slooooow going right now. The earlier revisions are always the worst because they have (surprise, surprise) the most handwritten changes. I've rewritten scenes, new chapters - it's a LOT of red ink. Blech.

So, I'm working on those changes, and hoping to get the middle written to Tiger Eyes. Yes, you read that right. I have the beginning and the ending, and part of the middle done. Just not all of the middle. But I'm looking at it with fresh eyes and think there might be hope for it as well. For anyone who's interested, Tiger Eyes is Diego's story (you might remember him from Eden's Pass. Yep, he's getting his own story. Or, he will be - someday.)

However, I've learned something about myself as a writer whilst tackling the pain in the butt that Angel has become. I can't outline. I've tried. Several times. And the story dies out within the first 30-50 pages. So, when I first started having trouble with Angel, I tossed out the chapter-by-chapter outline I'd so painstakingly created. Within a few days, I had 100 pages written.

I envy those who can outline an entire book. I can't. I've tried. God knows I've tried. But, for me, I find it squishes my creativity. I can't plan out the entire story - I have to just let it write itself. And once I did that with Angel, it was off and flying. My problem isn't that I don't know what to write next, it's that I'm at the end and don't quite know how to wrap it up. Ugh.

So, it will stay simmering in the back of my mind while I finished revising Devil and get back to work on Tiger Eyes. And then there's Dance with the Devil, which is on hold until these other projects are off my plate. That plate is pretty full right now. Which isn't a bad thing, really.

But it does mean there's a good chance I will continue being a bad blogger for now... I hope not, but somehow, that has a way of happening.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You could do what I do. I outline, write, then go back a week later and say, "This is not what I outlined. I better change the outline." Repeat as many times as you need to in order to finish, and when you're done you tell yourself that you outlined the story.

The only time I go back to check the outline is when I want to make sure I'm not skipping over a part I was all giddy over at the beginning.

Fred