PANIC
From happily moving along on my revisions of the Desire MS two days ago, now I'm in full panic mode. Yep, I'm in the 'my MS is a pile of dung that will never be in a decent enough shape to give me confidence that I can send it to the editor' mode.
I had a light bulb moment over the weekend that made me look at chapter 6, the chapter from hell where everything comes crashing down and think, ooh, it's not working because that's clearly a plot device I have in there. So chop went the plot device.
Two days fast forward: Now I'm thinking I have no plot. My characters are evolving and developing emotionally, so far so good. But it seems nothing is happening, plot wise. Is that possible? Then I scratch my head. Is it possible that the characters GMCs are constantly evolving but there's no plot because they are not doing anything or nothing's happening to them?
Panic Item # 2: My MS is so unglamorous as in there's no glamour. Yes, that's how messed up I am right now. Every time I open a Desire I'm reading and liking very much, I keep coming back to this. Hmm, these people are jet setting in an exotic backdrop while working through their issues, while my characters keep having light bulb moments about each other in boring settings like the office, the car, the office and so on... Do you see?
So my next problem is how do I glamorize the book? Do I just include a gratuitous scene where they're suddenly headed off to an exotic place to eat lunch and I describe how exotically exotic this whole place is in that scene?
That's how much messed up I am, how chaotic my thoughts are when it comes to this book, that it's making me wonder if I'll ever be happy with the whole lot of it to mail it.
In other news, to distract myself from the looming disaster, I wrote a couple of thousand words on the shiny, new WIP which did put me in a good mood. But I know the high will last only until I get to about 25K when the feeling that everything's a piece of junk will come back.
Very cheery for a Tuesday morning, don't you think?
6 comments:
Hi Sri - this is what your crit group is for! Post stuff to the minxes and let us have a look and give you some feedback if you like. I'm ready to read (and I bet its not half as bad as you think!)
Could be that nothing's happening because they're not doing anything. That's usually the case when this happens to me. Have one of them take action - dinner somewhere glamourous! To talk through their issues. :-)
Hope you get it sorted soon, Sri!
What may not seem glamorous to you may seem glamorous to readers. Where is that office or that car?
I recently read a Desire set in a small village in New England where the hero and heroine grew up. To me, it sounded gorgeous.
If you live in New York City, you think Tahiti is exotic. Live in Tahiti and you think New York City is exotic.
This is my long way of saying write your story the way it feels right. Let your heart guide you, not your head.
I agree with Sally. Run what you have so far past your crit group. They'll let you know if you need to change the setting or simply need to inject some action into the story. Don't panic.
Agree with Sally too. Why fret when there's help at hand, eh?
Hi Sri!
Just wondering how that submission is going now :) Hope your crit group helped!
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