It's interesting rewriting a scene. Each draft is different.  Each attempt takes me to different places.  I got Jacob and Jael to the Grange, into the Grange and then out of the Grange.  I left in, more or less, everything that happened once Jacob and Jael got inside.  (I'm pretty satisfied with that scene)  But getting there was just different.
  Part of the reason was that I started from Jael's POV.  She focused on different things that Jacob did in the previous drafts.  Naturally I'll need to go back and make a few more refining passes, add in more details and sense words but what's there is totally different.
  I cut out most of Jacob's clowning around.  He's not acting like a grown up, yet but he's less goofy in this chapter.  He's more opaque to her, interestingly enough.  Then I put in an 'moment'  between them.  A little jolt of electricity that Jael felt this time.  Confused the heck out of her...and me, to be honest.
  Anyway, we'll put up the revised chapters for critique after some more polishing next week.  We'll see if folks like this better.  Tonight is IM gaming night but Friday I should be able to get the new Sorcerer scene done.  Should be good stuff.
  Final thought, I use ellipses too much.  I need to work on that.  I like pauses in conversation, though.  It feels more natural.  Real conversations are full of interruptions and pauses.  On the other hand, this is a novel.  It needs to be readable as well as real. Too much of a good thing is still too much.

  I did a new set of 3k words last night and managed to get Jacob and Jael to the Grange.  I also managed to get Isaac and Jacob together and came up with a good reason for Isaac to depart.
  The downside is the feel of these chapters isn't quite right.  I need to get into the characters heads again.  The first two drafts had their flaws but they had a unity of feeling.  I was inside Jacob and Jael's head.  I don't know if I always conveyed that onto the page but I felt it.  I'm not sure if this draft has that quality.  I need to immerse myself in the world and in the writing.  But I'm also hyper-conscious of pacing right now.  I think that's pulling me out.
  We'll keep charging ahead, though.  Tonight we'll do the Grange, this time from Jael's POV.  We'll see how that works.  After the Grange, we come to another new scene with the Sorcerer.  I have high hopes for this scene.  It should raise the stakes and tug the plot in a new direction.  One inciting incident after another.  That's the plan, at least.

   I wrote about 3k words last night and I'm not happy with any of it.  All the 'fun' is gone out of the trip to the Grange.  In the first two drafts, the trip was a little mini-adventure, revealing character and building the world.  Maybe not a lot happened to advance the overall plot but it was fun and it got you deeper into the world.  This latest attempt is boring and I don't want to write boring scenes.
  Maybe I need to just cut the journey and have them just go from the farm with the village in about two paragraphs.  That kills some character development and some of the threat to Jael from more leering farmhands (everyone's FAVORITE antagonist...or not). I want this to be fun and full of wonder as well as a little threatening.
  I'm going to take one more crack at it tonight, jumping from the farm to running into Isaac halfway there.  If that doesn't work, I may need to cut right to the village in future drafts.
 

  December 2010 has not been a good month for me, writing-wise.  A big part of doing this blog has been to hold myself accountable, so I have to be honest with myself and with you all.  Work has been intense this month and there was the house buying stress as well.  But the fact is, I haven't made writing my top priority last month.  If I want to write professionally, I need to treat my writing as being my second job, not my hobby.
  I'm not waiting for New Years to try to fix it.  As soon as the bloody work website launches, I'm going back to writing every single day without fail.  First order of business, repacing 'the walk' to the Grange. I have in mind a pair of new scenes to replace the walk there and back and I'll be trimming down some stuff in the Grange.  I mused a few months ago about how a 'good stuff' chapter revision would read, where I'd keep only the chapters I felt were 'good' and then see how it reads.  I think this revision will be like that.
 I'll have to work hard and fast, though.  My deadline for myself is to have Angel Odyssey done by March 31st and sent off into the world.  To add to the fun, this draft is going to change some basic plot points to raise the stakes for Jacob and Jael.  But more on that tomorrow.

  Two more revised chapters done.  I wish I'd made this decision a while ago, to fix the pacing like this.  I dithered and fought over how I wanted the book to open.  Now that I've decided, thing seem to be popping along.
  So, now I have new things to ponder and battle with myself over.  I cut the trip to Isaac's house to get Jacob and Jael to the Grange faster.  I'm dangerously close to cutting Isaac out entirely.  He was never a big part of the story, sadly.  He was always intended to be the boy who 'could have been'.  I really want to have that in the book but I'm concerned that sub-plot, if that's what it is, is bogging things down. 
  I don't want to cut Isaac entirely.  I think it's important to show that Jacob has friends and to contrast Jacob's emerging manhood with Isaac's boyishness.  I just need to figure out a way to do that without getting in the way.  Maybe I can move the trip to Isaac's farm to after the 'inciting incident' in the Grange.  Hmmm.  More thinking required.

  I wrote about ten pages last night.  That felt good.  It was good to get inside the heads of my characters again.  But that's the problem with what I wrote.  I was too far inside their head and not far enough inside the plot.  It wasn't bad.  The first chapter was all one scene inside the barn.  It tied together nicely with the ending of the previous chapter but not enough happens.  Part of the purpose for the scene was to show Jacob's growing attraction to Jael and to show Jael more or less recovered.  The scene also showed Jacob's frustration with his life and both character's frustration with being tied together and cooped up at the farm for weeks. In the end, they decide to go on 'an adventure' (ie go to the Grange).  The problem is, I spend 1300~1700 words doing that.  I need to accomplish all that with less.
 The next chapter is my attempt to combine the 'walk' from chapter 3 with the walk to town from chapter 5. Again, there's some good character stuff but we (and they) are headed in the wrong direction.  Jacob and Jael are headed to Isaac's house to pick him up and then go into town.  Now this makes logical sense, Jacob misses his friend and wants to play after all this bedrest.  However, it doesn't make story sense.
  Story-wise, it is the 'right' thing to do to avoid Isaac's farm (and the insight into Isaac's home life, etc) and head straight towards the plot: the Grange, the sword and the Storyteller.
  So I won't say that last night was wasted, if nothing else it's good to be writing again, but I don't know how much of what I wrote I will keep.  I suspect not much.  That's ok.  This fourth draft is almost a first draft again.
  I just wrote that last line and scared myself.
  We'll try again tonight and see if we can't aim ourselves at the village and the plot this time.  Who knows, maybe they'll pick up Isaac on the way.  Or I can move Isaac's farm to being on the way to the village.

  Apologies once again for the lack of updates last week.  And for the lack of writing progress.  I got a little more feedback on the revised pacing I did for chapters 3 and onward.  It looks like I'm on the right track. So what does that mean?  Why, I get to rewrite the book!  And then re-revise it!
  It's ok, I think.  I was planning on just doing some surgery but this may work better. I'll have the old draft up on one screen and write based on that with an eye towards driving the plot with each chapter. 
  Now if I could just squeeze an hour or so more out of each day.  I could cut back on sleep but:
a. I love to sleep
b. Lots of sleep (and OJ) is all that's keeping me from getting sick this winter.

  I'll make it work, I may have to make some sacrifices but I'll make it work.  My goal is still to have the 'final' version of the book out and in agents/editor's hands by the end of March.

  Sorry for the lack of updates.  Work has been intense and I'm buying a house.  As a result, very little time for writing or critiquing.
  It's getting frustrating, actually.  I need to be moving forward with my 4th draft and for the last several weeks 'other things' have been intruding.  I need to make time to write as well as critique other people's work and all the other non-writing stuff.  I was better at this, earlier in the year.  I don't FEEL burnt out but I wonder if there's something inside me trying to hold be back, trying to put up distractions and obstacles.
  Well once we get the house bought and the website for work launched, I'll be less stressed and have more time.  But I feel like I can't just wait for life to calm down.  Life is never going to really calm down and hand me free time to write.(  I need to make time and if other things get cut, then they get cut.  I'd rather write than do just about anything.  So I need to do it, just write.
  That said, I have about 5 pieces to critique for Saturday's writer's group.  Hopefully I can pound those out and get some work done on the next revision of Jael and Jacob.  I'll post another update on how that new, faster paced draft is being received, later.

  A lot of literary housekeeping last night.  Chapters to critique, writer's groups to administer...not enough time to write after all that.  I posted up my alternate pacing for the early part of the book. It's a rough draft, so there's going to be typos and sentences that are unpolished but hopefully folks will be able to tell me whether or not I'm on the right track.
  In line with that, tonight I'm going to tackle the next chapter in the fourth draft.  I want to combine both 'going for a walk' scenes and get Jacob and Jael to town.  Knowing me, it won't be easy.  There's always so much I want to do, I think I get in my own way.
  I have started adding epigrams to the beginning of each chapter.  Nothing long, a sentence or two at most.  I love writing them.  I love the the windows into the world you can create with them.  I plan on using them to answer questions no one asks, in character.  Like what Eidothean magic is*.  Well, we'll see what happens.
  I have a hard deadline that I'm imposing for myself.  Angel Odyssey has to be 'done' and sent out by the end of March.  If I can do that, then I'm on my way to finishing at least one novel a year.  I can do that while working full time, I think.



*Unless I get a bunch of readers who are up on their Greek myths, this one will probably fly over people's heads...sort of like a Chrysaor might.

   With fear and trembling, I sent off my submission for the Fairwood Writer's workshop at Norwescon 34 (http://www.norwescon.org/).  Ok, maybe that's overstating things a bit.  I sent off chapters 1 and 2 and at this point the fear and trembling is more or less gone. I just want to know what they liked, what they didn't and what I should fix.  To send it off, I had to write a synopsis.  I've never done one before.  Worse, it had to be under a thousand words...which makes it an...interesting kind of synopsis.  Apparently, there are a lot of different types of synopsis for a variety of uses.  Some are used as part of a solicitation letter sent to an editor or agent.
  Related, I am sending the first page of Angel Odyssey off for review to someone else.  I'm interested to hear what he was to say.  The first line of Angel Odyssey is pretty good and I think after a few pages, the chapter gets engrossing but the first page...I do have my doubts.  We'll see what he has to say.
  The person reviewing page 1 was at the PNWA Holiday Party (http://www.pnwa.org/).   I went to the holiday party as part of my baby steps towards being social.  It was fun and hard.  I stayed for about an hour and a half, pretending to be comfortable and confident.  I talked to some folks, got business cards (didn't give any out because that still feels gauce unless someone asks).  Most folks were nice, the authors there were all very friendly.  I wish I could have stuck around to talk to Susan Wingate but I got hot and ran out of social juice.  I decided to eject before I did something weird..er than usual.  Anyway, seems like a good thing with mostly nice people.  I'll try to go to as many PNWA events as I can.
  This week I'm working on the first few chapters, getting my past-due critiques done for my writer's groups and if I have extra time, thinking about and working on my Clarion West application.