Progress Report

I did two hours of fiddling with the opening scene today. First I read it over and smoothed out anything that seemed awkward. Then I removed every adjective and adverb from the first five pages and considered each one individually. I probably eliminated a third of them, replaced another third with a stronger word, and kept the remaining third the same.

I have a few more exercises I'd like to do with the opening pages, but I figure I should see if I'm at least on the right track with it first. I posted the first 1,300 words to AW. I'll give it until Thursday morning to accumulate feedback.

In the meantime, I'm going to:

a) do the adjective/adverb exercise with the second half of the opening scene.

b) patch a gap in the MS where I tore out a few paragraphs and transplanted them to the opening.

c) read over the query and maybe tweak a few lines.

d) read the synopsis and evaluate how much work it still needs.

And There Was Rejoicing Throughout The Land...

After eight frustrating days, I have finished the draft of the new opening scene.

I'm not actually done with it, of course. Au contraire: tomorrow I will read it over, revise it however I see fit, and then post it to AW for another round of shredding critique.

The Plan for April

I'm not going to do an hours goal for this month. Instead, I'm doing week-by-week goals.

For the first week of April, my goal is to finish this version of the opening scene: complete the draft, revise, and post to the AW forums for comments. I'll need to see what the comments are before I figure out the next step. I may wind up having to do yet another version if this one still doesn't work.

At least I feel like I'm making some solid progress with it now. I spent most of last week shaping the existing dialogue to fit the new sequence of events, and then changing my mind about the sequence of events. The end of the scene is complete, as are chunks of the middle, but I was banging my head against the wall trying to write a new beginning. I really liked the first line I had, but it didn't work with the revised action of the scene.

And then yesterday I figured out that with a tweak it could still work, and three hours of writing later I have the opening 1,000 words that connect to the first completed chunk almost done. This has been a slog, man. My brain had decided the book was finished, so making up new stuff for it has not been easy.

In Like Lamb, Out Like a Lion

This March has been nuts, weather wise. The first week of the month, we had super mild spring-like weather. Today we're getting a frakking blizzard.

Let's take a look at how I did with my macro and micro goals, shall we?

First the macro:

a) So. 30 hours on Mender. Did 40.

1) Finish the revision.

2) Spellcheck the MS.

3) Send it to my beta swap partner.

4) Work on my query. 

5) Give feedback to ~30 queries posted on Absolute Write. 

6) Submit my own query for feedback, and revise accordingly.

7) Write a synopsis.

8) Make changes to Mender as needed based on beta swap partner feedback. In progress. See micro goals.

b) 20 hours to figure out what I'm writing next  FAIL. I did maybe 3 hours, and didn't figure out jack. My head just wasn't in it.

I then split goal #8 above into a series of micro goals as follows:

1) Read through my beta swap partner's in-text feedback and make notes on the printout of the MS.

2) Make necessary changes to chapter 2 - the end.

3) Edit chapter 1. 

4) Give feedback for 8 novel openings on Absolute Write.

5) Post updated opening to forum for feedback. Edit again based on responses. In progress. This bit is killing me. I've worked on it for 8 hours so far and am not even kind of done. *sigh*

Fifteen Years

I can't believe it was five years ago I posted about my ten-year anniversary of meeting The Husband on the first and only blind date of my life.

Today is the fifteenth anniversary of that date, and everything I said five years ago still holds true.

Opening Scene Open-Heart Surgery

When I got my first round of beta feedback, one of the consensuses was that the opening three-chapter prologue-like chunk was dragging on too long and negatively affecting the pacing of the first half of the book.

For the next draft, one of the changes I made was cutting 3,000+ words out of that opening chunk and condensing it from three chapters of four scenes to one two-scene chapter.

The beta feedback I got on that version was that the whole book was pretty much query-ready... except the first scene, which was still not working. Which is awesome, since it's not like the opening of the novel is important or anything. (Self-directed eye roll.)

I tried my best to tighten it up some more, and then posted the first 1,000 words on Absolute Write. The feedback I got has made me realize that I'm pretty much rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic over here. There is just too much WTF in the scene to justify heroic measures to save it.

This is a scary revelation to have one week before you were planning to start sending out queries. But I pulled on my big-girl panties and made a list of everything that I felt had to stay in the scene-- Mary meeting Leopold, most of their conversation, some worldbuilding aspects, tension between the magic-users and religious extremists-- and mentally let go of everything else.

Interestingly, I got a new idea almost immediately, and as of today have worked out a full outline, including dialogue. The outline is 1,500 words, but my outlines tend to be wordy, so I'm hopeful I can craft a 2,000 word scene that makes sense. My plan is to work on it two hours a day until it's done, and then post the first 1K words for feedback again, and rinse and repeat until I have something I'm happy with-- and which at least gets me a "this doesn't suck" majority opinion on the AW forums.

Another Update

1) Read through my beta swap partner's in-text feedback and make notes on the printout of the MS.

2) Make necessary changes to chapter 2 - the end.

3) Edit chapter 1.

4) Give feedback for 8 novel openings on Absolute Write. In progress. I'm up to 7 now.

5) Post updated opening to forum for feedback. Edit again based on responses. In progress. I posted the opening today. I've gotten two responses already, both absolutely ripping it to shreds. I'm going to give it another day or two to accumulate responses, and then it looks like I'll be doing a serious re-think and re-write of the opening for the rest of the month.