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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

33k to go - eep!

Tuesday rolls in, cold and bitter bright, and I'm still ten chapters behind my goal. This does not make me happy. And it means that I'm going to pull the plug on Mr. Modem so I can get off the ever-distracting internet so I can finish up.

In other news....
* I'm getting critiques back for the novel I finished at the beginning of February from my beta readers. Talk about kiss of death! I just had someone write me that the pacing is to slow and teh description is lacking. Action is the main push! I can't have it go slow!

* Other critiquers don't like the intrigue in a sci-fi, they can't tell who's on what side. I wanted them to be unsure, but I want them to keep reading so we have a problem there that needs to be addressed.

* Another major problem- the MC is inconcsistent. Is he really violent or not? Why hasn't he killed anyone yet? Some don't like the lack of action, others get huffy when the character has implied violence assigned to them.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I hate rough drafts.

I'm a big believer in the idea that you can't have a fully formed story without a finished draft. The story changes, angles don't work out as you hack your way through a story- and yes I do mean hack - so you need that first draft to work out the kinks. But after taking a month off and looking back I want to scream in horror! That's not MY story! That's not what I meant to write! Who came in and changed this dialouge it's trash!

So, March is the editing month. Build this, burn that, fix, balance, edit, change. And maybe by summertime I'll have a respectable second draft that I can present to my readers with a goal of having a ready-to-query draft by January.

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