Friday, June 12, 2009

Notes to Self

No, you may not start planning out a new story before you finish *this* one. Not even if it is shiny and fun. Sorry. You don't get to skip the hard stuff.

Yes, I know the last few thousand words are hard. You know what's harder? Editing. And that's what you have in front of you.

Hey--quit whimpering. You're just feeling sorry for yourself because it's raining and there's no more coffee in the pot. Get over it.

Look, if you're having that much trouble, you could always fold the laundry or clean out your office. At least you'd be productive, instead of endless surfing for blog updates or new Facebook posts. If you can't stay focused, I will put one of those net-nanny programs on your laptop. Don't think I won't.

I know you have some cleaning up to do earlier in the manuscript. I even agree with the crit group comments--Dierdre and Galvin don't have enough screen time or importance to be 2 characters. Now isn't the time to go back and change that. If you must, make a note in the manuscript. When you do go back, it won't take all that much time or effort to make the shift. (And that is probably your take home message--if you can merge 2 characters without more than a few minutes work, you should.) It's not a big enough change to feel at all derailed in your writing. So quit moping, girl!

You've already done a good job at making Callie more real and more specific. Now quit beating yourself up at making all the Fey seem a bit generic and robotic in your first pass. That's what a good reader or crit group is for.

It's a pretty good story and if you keep working at it, it'll be better than pretty good. But it will neither write nor edit itself. So enough with the blogging.

Get back to work.

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