Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Rambling On

It occurs to me that I never wrote a post yesterday.  Derp.  And I'm not sure what to write about today.  Maybe if I ramble on, something will come to me.

I finally got to work on those edit notes last night.  Did one page worth of written notes, which amounted to 23 pages of the book.  Of course, I added a bunch of stuff in those 23 pages - like a brand new beginning - so it was more work than it sounds like.  I may have repeated myself a couple times, so that's something to watch for during the next edit phase.  Eight pages of notes left to go.  Blerg.

I committed a cardinal sin in book creation (maybe several) when I redid the beginning.  And I don't care.  It works for me.  We'll see if it works for the proofers.  

For the most part, I'm a rule-abiding type person, but for certain things, it rubs me the wrong way when I'm told I can't do something.  Part of me is all like 'oh, yeah? watch me.'  When I wrote my first book, I described the heroine by having her look at herself in a detached way on a TV monitor.  I was told by early readers that this was a no-no.  And my hackles rose.  I liked it, so I left it.  Maybe someday, that book will be published and all y'all can tell me whether it works.

I still love that book.  I contacted my editor once to see if she could help me make it publishable.  The amount she quoted me was understandable - it's an unwieldy behemoth - but totally not in the budget.  We'll see what happens in the future.

Looking back, I don't hate any of my older books.  They all need work, but I don't think any of them should be relegated to the trash heap.  They can all be fixed.  Some of them might not be as timely as they were when I wrote them, but the ideas are sound.  :shrug: 

Oh, I go through phases where I'm all like 'I hate this book', and I wonder whether everyone else will hate the book, too, but that's usually while I'm editing it.  Once I get through that, it's all good.  Okay, not ALL good.  Even after I publish, I wonder whether people will hate the books I love.  It's a thing.

Today, I hope to get at least another couple of notes input.  I love how this book turned out, even if I hate it a little.  ;o)

What about you?  Do you have a love/hate thing going on with your writing?  If you're not a writer, do you feel that way about your endeavors sometimes?  Do you have anything to ramble on about?

2 comments:

  1. I ALWAYS have a love/hate thing going with writing--with the words, the characters, the plot, the setting. But like you, by the time I get done, I'm mostly happy with the way things turn out.

    There are times, when I'm in a writing rut and my sales are sucking because nothing new is out there that I consider pullin gout one of the old manuscripts. Most of them are...timely but dated. Say what?!? The subject matter is timely but the setting and timeframe is dated and trying to get them update to "modern standards" would take waaaay more time than I want to invest at the moment.

    I break the Romance Rule of POV: Do NOT Head-hop. Yeah...I follow the rule for the HQN books, and in the Nightrider books, it doesn't matter cuz those are first person alternating. But the rest of my books? I use what LG and I call the Cinematic POV. Because the story plays out like a movie as I write and I darn well want to know what everyone is thinking. Besides, if it's good enough for LaNora, it's good enough for me! That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

    Okay, this was my next to last stop. About time to get my Word Hat on and start scrivening new words. Happy Wednesday and later, tater!

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  2. I missed you yesterday, but I hoped you went fishing. Yay for getting more pages done!

    I often hate my WIP while I'm writing it, less so while editing -- I'm numb by then. But since my fiction doesn't sell, I concentrate on nonfiction, which can get tiresome, but never gets into "I hate it" range.

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