What Now?

Okay, I just cannot think of anything else to do with this manuscript to put off sending it out to agents again. I do need to re-type it, and I do need to read it aloud one more time, but them I'm going to have to give it up and send it out again.

Slacking

I realized that I've been quite a slacker on my blog lately. I'm always coming up with great ideas about what I want to add, and then doing what I always do, which is FAIL TO IMPLEMENT! But I am really working on my manuscript every day, and making it better, so at least I'm following through on that. Once I get my revisions finished and send it out into the world again, I'll have some time to work on my blog.

Revision Burn Out Point

I'm 87 pages through my 110 page MS combing through each scene to see if it has enough tension, conflict, disaster... But I'm burned out!!! I have to stop because I'm just phoning it in at this point. I need a break.

New Opening Chapters Complete

I finally finished my opening chapters and attempted to ramp up the tension and conflict in each scene. So now I'm ready for another round of revision. I printed out all of the revision checklists that I put together after reading all of the books. Now I just need to go through each checklist.

Hopefully this won't be a terribly lengthy process. A lot of the checklists have duplicates from other lists. But I htink this is going to be the next step toward presenting a worthy MS.

Finding The One

You know how it is when you know you're missing something, but you just don't know what? Like this guy looks "perfect on paper" but you just know he's not "the one" and then you meet "the one" and you just know? Well I've never had that experience with a man, but I finally had that experience with my writing (which I happen to think is better.)

I'd been really struggling with the opening of the novel. I'd stripped it down, thrown it out, and re-written it dozens of time. But it wasn't until I read Scene and Structure that I had an epiphany.

I'd been reading and reading and reading... but I was still missing that final piece of the puzzel, which was understanding how to structure the scenes and sequels of my book. So now I'm off and running, making sure all my scenes have a goal, conflict, and a disaster, and all my sequels have emotion, thought, decision, and action.

And what do you know, I think I've found "the one!" story opening that is. Once I get it all down and finish putting all my scenes through this test, then I'll go back and do some other revision steps, but this is what I was looking for all along.