It’s challenging at this fledgling state of my writing career to move forward, simply because there are so many paths I could be moving forward on. I started this week beginning to go in depth with my main characters, with the help of strategies learned in Getting Into Character. I got somewhere with my main character, who I still don’t totally gel with, so that was good.

Then a writing buddy requested a new version of my novel, because I was bragging how I’d finally analysed the thing into a sequence that worked without overdoing the flashbacks. She liked the story but had a hard time following my meanderings in the trousers of time. ( Terry Pratchett reference. I can’t help it.) I’ve been wanting to do a rewrite to show my honey (he knows the ideas, but hasn’t read it all) so this seemed like confirmation that I should go ahead with an actual second draft.

New course set, onward we go. Second draft now in progress. Same story, less parts that suck.

I don’t mean wearing a hole in the floor when under stress, I mean building appropriate tension throughout a story!

As I continue to mine the bountiful gold of Swain’s “Techniques of the Selling Writer”, pacing has become an issue. My writing prof said it would happen, but I didn’t want to believe her. Sadly , I am facing the truth that my love for words can, if I let it, impede the effective telling of a story (At least, in novel form. Those gypsie storytellers can probably get away with it!).

I am, admittedly, a slowy, flowy, whimsical kind of person. It’s there in the clothes I prefer, the designs I decorate with, and in my dancing. It also comes through in my writing. Now it isn’t that this is a bad thing per se, but long sentences, paragraphs and even words release tension while sharp, short, terse ones create it. So, to tell the story in a way that lets the reader experience it emotionally, I need to pace the words to match the appropriate emotions. This means being deliberately choppy, which is just against my nature.

My prof would say that I am resistant. I would agree. However…

I. Am. Learning!