Ah, finally, I cracked the nut on the revisions to my manuscript. I passed halfway point earlier in the week, but then I found myself lost in weeds as I tried to figure out how to keep the tension up and maintain the story I wanted to tell. The chapter I just finished was brutal to revise. Longest 5 pages ever. But it's done and out of the way and I have a clear shot to the end. Still a lot of work to do as I'm chucking story bits out and replacing them with new plot turns, but I can picture where the climax is going, and that hopefully means I'll finish the revisions soon. Might work tomorrow, but the power of Saturday is strong. Let's see how I feel when I get up.
January 2010 Archives
With apologies to my editor, I'm not working on my manuscript today. When I became a writer, I dreamed about the magic moment when a producer or publisher would contact me personally and tell me they wanted to produce my play or publish my book. Well, today, that magic moment happened. I received an email from Gateway Theare in Richmond, BC. They want to produce The Forbidden Phoenix in April 2011, and they want to do it with a full orchestra and a large chorus. The production is a long way down the road, but I'm doing a happy dance in every room of my house right now. Needless to say, it's been hard to concentrate on my revisions. Guess I'll work on them over the weekend.
Today, I'm officially halfway through the revisions of The Mystery of the Cyber Bully manuscript. Phew! The major changes are in the latter half of the book, but now that I have some momentum, I don't think I'll have too much trouble making the changes. I have to make sure that I don't get bogged down in polishing the chapters. Just push through the changes and then go back and fix things. If I spend too much time agonizing over the details, I'll lose steam. Other writers might work a different way, but this is the method that works for me. It's extra work, but it's fun to see the writing evolve over many drafts.
Sometimes, a writer has to go away from their story before they can fix it. The trip to Richmond and the break from The Mystery of the Cyber Bully was just what I needed. Today, I was able to cycle through about 10 pages and 2 chapters worth of revisions without feeling like I was swimming through quicksand. It's now the end of the day, and I'm looking at a section that needs some fresh eyes and recharged brain, so I'm shutting down for the day. I'm confident that if I can maintain this pace, I'll have the manuscript revised by the end of next week and polished by the first week of February.
I'm excited to see a music workshop of my play, The Forbidden Phoenix. There's a public presentation at Gateway Theatre in Richmond, BC Saturday night. I'm hoping that this will be the first step towards a production of the play on the west coast. My composer is hard at work scoring the piece and he said that all is going well. I can't wait to see the reading. Hopefully, it will give me a shot in the arm for revising my book. Still sluggish, but I'm making progress. Good thing I have time.
Slow moving, barely able to sail out of dock, I'm just so lethargic today. I forced myself to cycle through the first chapter of The Mystery of the Cyber Bully just so that I could get some kind of momentum going. It was the easiest chapter to revise and yet I'm staring at the end of the day and wondering where all the time went. Tomorrow, I'll have to step up the workload, but I am so not into working this week. Okay, shutting down now. Back at it tomorrow.
You move it to the left
And you go to the NDP
Wildrose Alliance to the right
Yeah it happened overnight
Steady Eddy, take it slow
With a whole lot of soul
Don't move it too fast
Just make PC last
You cut just like a Liepert
Yeah you do real cool
AB Hospital in limbo
Yeah how low can you go?
Now come on poll numbers
Don't fall down on me now
Now move it right here
To the Stelmach shuffle
Yeah yeah yeah to the Stelmach shuffle
Yeah yeah yeah to the Stelmach shuffle
Forsyth and Anderson
Cross the floor
Can't stand it no more
Now come on Fred Horne
Now stop the ratings slide
Just ride ride ride
Little PC, ride!
Yeah yeah yeah do the Stelmach shuffle
Yeah yeah yeah do the Stelmach shuffle
Will Ted Morton shine
Yeah yeah yeah shake off Mel Knight baby
Yeah yeah yeah shake off Janis Tarchuk baby
Yeah yeah yeah do the Stelmach shuffle
Yeah yeah yeah do the Stelmach shuffle
Yeah like the polls told you how
Yeah yeah yeah do the Stelmach shuffle
Yeah yeah yeah do the Stelmach shuffle
I finished a rough draft of the revised outline for The Mystery of Cyber Bully. Not sure about it yet. The connective tissue isn't quite meshing yet. I'll take some time to cycle through it and see if I can't flesh out the details and see what fits and what needs tweaking. I want to be sure of the structure of the revision before I commit to the rewrite.
The equation of revisions is simple: Manuscript + notes = head - hair. I'm pulling out the last few strands of my hair as I figure out how to navigate the revisions of The Mystery of the Cyber Bully.There are a few changes that on the surface look minor, but they actually blow up the last half of the book. Grr. The good news is that the revisions make the book better, so I have to get over my laziness and make the adjustment.
Smart thing to do is go backwards to an outline and map out the story beats so it will be easier to make the changes.
Okay, "we need to talk" means the same thing in publishing as it does in relationships. The publisher didn't like the idea. No writer likes to hear that his/her idea sucks, but I take heart from my days in theatre where I read mixed reviews of my plays. Critics at the same performance had completely different opinions of the show. I know this idea has potential and I just have to find a publisher who agrees with me. My agent just informed me that because of the battered state of the publishing industry, the days of selling fiction based on outlines are gone, and I'd need to develop this into a full manuscript before she can shop it around. Sigh. Not a great time to be a fiction writer. I'll have to figure out if I have enough time to invest in writing this novel on spec.
But not all is lost with this publisher. The good news is that he still is interested in working with me. He wants one-line pitches from which he'll pick one for me to develop into an outline and hopefully a novel that he'll publish. As rejections go, this isn't a bad one. If he rejects all ten of my pitches, then I'm in trouble.
That's the email reply to my outline pitch for a young adult novel. Good? Bad? I'm not sure. It could mean "the company is going bankrupt," or it could mean "your outline sucked so bad I have to tell you over the phone." I'm hoping it means "I love the your idea so much I have to get the rights before you send it to someone else." Whatever it means, I'll have to wait to talk to the publisher. Why do I suddenly feel like I'm in an episode of 24 and Jack Bauer just barked at me?
I just got the thumbs up from my agent about an outline for a young adult novel. Now, some may argue that getting approval from your agent is one step above getting a pat on the head from your mom, but my agent has to sell my ideas. If she doesn't believe in something, she doesn't want to put her neck on the line. I'm going to take her thumbs up as a little victory.
Next step, the outline goes to the publisher who asked if I wanted to pitch novel ideas. I still owe him an outline, and I've been working on that all morning. I'm not loving this second outline yet. I think the idea needs more time to ferment. Better to send an outline I like than one that doesn't spark. After all, I'm the one who has to work on it for a year.
Today, I was reminded that notes are opportunities, if you look at the right way. I looked over my editor's notes and saw a way to make my book even better. His suggestion sparked a better idea to address the problem in the manuscript. I'm still chewing over one major note before I launch into the revisions, and I'm waiting for my editor to respond to a question. If I heard from him tomorrow, I'm off to the races. Otherwise, I'll peck away at the outline in the morning and crawl to the gym in the afternoon and try to live up to my New Year's resolution.
Okay, 2010, I'm rolling up my sleeves and getting to work today. I have an outline to write and a manuscript to revise. I'm feeling upbeat about tackling the stories. One is the last in my mystery series and the other is a horror novel for teens. I'll try to keep the two separate.
