September around the corner

Note the generic headline. That means I have nothing on my mind and no idea what the heck I'm doing or writing about. Scary, eh? Blogging for blogging's sake.

School started for me and my daughter yesterday, which means I can expect my free time to either disappear thanks to economics homework or reappear since child heads to school each day. It's too soon to tell.

I have been tweeting more than usual these days, as some old friends have made some new use of the tool and somehow sucked me into it also. That's okay. I guess.

Between my iron deficiency, my child, my work schedule and my volunteer schedule, my writing time has been slim. But I've steadily been reworking the mythology of the novel I've been shopping to agents, Manipulations, book one of my Fashion and Fiends series. The more I work on it, the more I wonder if the friend who suggested to me marketing them out of order might be right.

Books two (Courting Apparitions) and three (Absolution) are definitely more exciting than book one, and since book three transitions one of the protagonists into the antagonist, I can't help but wonder if I should market book three first and leave books one and two for the story of how this all came to be...

Kind of like Star Wars.

That's lots of run-ons and fragments but... got my thoughts down.

Still editing

I have finished the editing for the first six chapters of the new mythic concept for Manipulations. The chapters are still going at a pace of about an hour a piece and I enjoy them. I've removed a lot of text, having deleted about 20 pages so far. That wasn't my intent, but it will be interesting to see what happens at the end. I will have room to add scenes if I need to. That could work well.

It's got me thinking about the difference between easy edits and laborious ones. I really believe that the easier the edits, the closer to "right" the story is.

Simplicity

I have a few free minutes and an internet signal so I thought I'd make a quick post.

I have edited the first two chapters of my first book, the one I usually shop around. A few weeks ago I thought I had a brilliant concept (and I still think it's clever and sharp) that would improve my villain. Galen has always had weak motivations. What I had in mind altered the entire universe, gave the universe a new mythology and the supernatural rules for my villain would change.

This meant massive rewrites of ever chapter in his POV.

I was willing to do that, but every time I tried I couldn't get the right zing. It required a new first chapter and nothing worked. Nothing had enough suspense and tension. And then I reversed the idea. I had the same idea, making one character a totally different creature, but not Galen.

Galen remains a witch.

His mate becomes something different. Something he is very jealous of.

And that jealous is a pivotal part of his motivation.

Minor edits to the first couple chapters have taken an hour each. This thrills me. It feels like I'm on the right track. I like this because every time I read the original text, I couldn't help but think, "I like this. I don't want to delete this."

My new revisions preserve the original story and its settings.