I’ve fallen into my writer’s cave again but this time around it is not quite as dark and scary a place as it was a few weeks ago. In fact, I’m not sure I even crawled out of it, but there are slivers of light now where before there was only dark.
For this new book I dusted off a manuscript I’d written for NaNoWriMo nearly four years ago. I kept almost every character, renaming many along the way. For some reason with Book Two – which sadly doesn’t have a proper name yet – I gravitated towards names starting with J. There was Jessica, James, Jocelyn, and Jeremy, and a prominent last name of Jamieson, and every time I had a new character to add, a J name was the first to pop into my head. Apparently this is not an unusual phenomenon in the novel writing world. So I’m not weird. Or maybe all writers are weird. You decide.
So I had all these wonderful characters. I loved each and every one of them. But the plot of said NaNoWriMo book? Well, it sucked. Truly.
And I had another idea I loved that had sparked during one of the final rounds of edits on Redesigning Rose (something I’m learning occurs with me during the editing stages. As I write this blog post and edit Book Two, I am already plotting my next novel.)
So I decided to marry the two, something that was infinitely more difficult than I ever could have imagined. But I’ve done it. I stripped away everything from that shitty old draft except three scenes and rewrote/wrote my new story with all the old characters. And it’s mostly finished. I’ve slotted the biggest pieces of the plot puzzle together. Finally.
I have some minor tweaks and oodles of line-by-line rewriting to do to polish the draft before handing it over to my beta readers. And I’m determined. I really want to finish by September 15th. I don’t know if this is possible, but I didn’t think my last deadline was possible either and I did it. And I also never thought writing on the subway was possible, but I’m doing it. I can crank out 850 words on my iPad during my 40 minute commute. That’s more than I write in an hour at home. I’ve even discovered a way to edit Book Two on my subway trips even though it’s a copy and paste affair into my writing software when I arrive home. Scrivener, please, please, please keep working diligently on your iPad app!
I’m studying anything and everything right now, observing for even the tiniest of details to add. Nothing is off limits. My manuscript is never far from my thoughts as a sentence tweak here or there pops into my mind at random times. I have notes everywhere. I get so deep into my writing zone underground on the subway that I’ve almost missed my stop several times, something I’ve rarely even done with reading.
Speaking of reading…
I’m so far in the zone that I haven’t picked up a novel in over a week. I don’t even know why I wrote all the words leading up to this because that says it all right there.
Lydia Laceby 