Ticking Clock

I set the due date for my manuscript to arrive with the editor for the beginning of August.  That date felt so far away when I set it.  Now, it's around a week away.  And I don't feel anywhere near ready.  It's amazing how many things seem more urgent...or interesting... than editing, even as the due date looms large.  It's not that I can't reshuffle that deadline, but I'd like to be done with that manuscript for a while.  I love it, but I've been working on it for over two years.  I'd like to do something else for a while.

I imagine whether I end up moving the due date or not, just the act of giving myself a deadline, artificial or otherwise, will drive me to get more done.  It's amazing how inspirational a due date can be.  It's just so very tedious to change a manuscript from first- to third-person.  I know it needs to be done.  I've given the reasons it needs to be done.  I get it.  But I'd much rather watch a video, read a book, write new material with my middle-grade fiction, or clean my toilet, anything rather than back to the tedium of editing like this.  Even revision can entail a little writing and, therefore, more fun.  Ah, well.  I have nothing more important to do, really, so off I go.  Editing, here I come.

Booboo

What does it take to keep a blonde busy?  As it turns out, just one false move.  Here's a major thou shalt not of editing that I learned recently:  Thou shalt not make any major editorial decisions when you're half asleep.  I tried this.  Bad idea.

I wanted to do something toward writing one busy day.  I was half asleep.  I'm trying to convert my first person novel to third person, so I don't have to balance my main male character's voice with my main female character's voice.  Then I can keep his voice and ignore that suggestion that I cut his perspective entirely.  But it's a lot of work and very tedious to go through and change every I, me, my, etc. to third person.

I decided in my groggy state to use the auto correct.  Then, of course, my computer was choking.  I had to reboot it.  Now, I can't undo the fact that I accidentally changed every me to him, when I meant to change them to her, and so I'm having to change every himssage back into message, himn into mean, and all such embarrassing and loony changes without the benefit of undo.  I would thump my head into a wall with frustration that I made even MORE annoying and tedious work for myself except then I'd damage the few brain cells I have left at the end of the day.

Preparing for the Editor

When the publisher turned me down, they recommended I get myself an editor.  I'd considered it before, but now, it's become essential.  I just got an email back from said editor, inviting me to turn in my stuff [if possible] around the first part of August.

I've been incorporating the last significant feedback I received from a fellow writer.  I've chosen the middle ground.  I've been trying to figure out how it works within the typical format of the romance novel.  A lot of romance novels start when guy and girl catch each other's eye and ends when they close the deal somehow and become an item.  I don't start there.  That's what the feedback [and the publisher for that matter] seems to want.  They want my romance novel to be JUST a typical, run-of-the-mill romance novel that starts at eye contact and ends with happily ever after.  But that's not what the story is about for me.  It misses the point.  As I've said before, for me, it's the tale of two broken people who have to seek healing for themselves before they are ready to create a relationship with each other.

So now, I've cut out everything from the first 85 pages that isn't critical.  I introduce the character and make her loveable [I hope] by making the reader laugh and see her love for others around her.  They see her heart and her humor.  Now the reader cares about her, they may care about her false start at romance [the once upon a time that sounds like so many romance novels and fairy tales but ends badly] then her dramatic scene of pain and heart-ache.  All of that now happens in 15 pages, a prologue and a brief part one, which sets up [without flashbacks or dream sequences] the heroine's back story.  I can see where I need to reshape her character some, but overall, she's more or less ready for editing software and another read through with my husband.

The problem is his part of the narrative.  That same reader recommended I cut his side, where I write from both his and her points of view to add to the mystery.  From what I understand, there's no mystery in a romance novel.  Pretending there's mystery in a romance novel is like pretending there's some kind of mystery as to what's going to happen to the Titanic at the beginning of the movie.  I don't like cutting his side entirely since so much of the story revolves around him, and not just the romance.  A big part of the climax is about working out his trials.  If this is her story, his trials don't mean much.  It becomes a different story entirely.  In addition, I've just written the second book's first draft from, once again, the male and female perspective.  If I cut the guy out of this story, I have to do the same with that story.  And I'm not willing to do that.  Once again, it changes the narrative.

So does this mean I have to change it to third person?  I like the urgency of first person.  I don't know.  I'm inclined to find a new way, a brief way, to introduce him and to keep his voice as a back-up singer, less important than hers but still present.   That's the next part for me to struggle with.  Wish me luck.

Ignoring the Elephant

I have started tearing apart the manuscript of my first book, After the Dream, as per recent feedback.  I kept the original draft, but I see now that it won't work for a lot of readers.  It's just not "fun" enough.  It hurt to write, so it hurts to read it.  As I said before, I have feedback that would guide me how to turn it into a standard romance.  But I don't WANT it to be a standard romance.  The, for me, there's no point in writing a standard romance since there are so many.  The book for me is at least as much about healing as it is about romance.  So I need that aspect.  How do I balance fun and meaning?

So while I ponder that, I'm off doing some fun and frivolous writing on the first draft book two of my middle-grade fiction series, Doomimals.  The first, Cock-a-doodle-DOOM, one has mostly been run through League of Utah Writers for feedback and is also waiting a revision, as is the first draft of the sequel to After the Dream, Pigs Fly.

So what do I do in the face of all this revision that needs to be done?  I entertain my kids with chapter after chapter of the fun stuff, Cat-a-clysm, because they're my most immediate audience.  I no sooner finish one chapter then they have to have the next.  Which makes me wonder what I was doing wrong with the first one that they weren't pushing me quite so hard to get them a new chapter.  Maybe it's just because this one is about CATS, and as far as they're concerned, nothing is more important.  So I keep looking at the elephant, the large pile of revision to be done.  And while I'm looking at it and trying to guilt trip myself into doing something about it, I'm entertaining kids.  It's the adult, mature version of procrastination.