Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Scrapping A MS




Hello everyone! So, when I decided to change up the blogging schedule I didn’t intend to fall off the wagon completely. It’s been a month since my last post. Things have been crazy, awesome, and a little unbelievable. There’s too much of that to be included in one post so I’m going to talk about writing instead.



Today something frustrating happened that hasn’t happened to me in a while. I had the moment of realization that a project just isn’t working and I had to scrap it and restart.



To clarify, this isn’t the big edit I’ve been working on. To keep myself fresh I’ve been doing work on my next big project on the side, the outline and 1st draft of a project I’m currently calling The Demon’s Daughter. When my outline wasn’t really growing I started writing in words. It wasn’t until a few days ago that I realized that my story was boring and going nowhere. It’s been a while since this has happened to me so I assumed it never would again. I think that since I’ve become a better writer that I was immune to these kinds of problems. Yeah, not so much.



Every concept has a fatal flaw and The Demon’s Daughter, or TDD (I need acronyms), was its plot. It just wasn’t one of the reasons I fell in love with the story and was always something I struggled with. Finally I caught myself thinking how ready I was to write the sequel where I had a ton of great plot ideas. After over a month of back and forth it was a light bulb flashing. I could incorporate a lot of the elements of the first book with the plot for the second. It really throws off my groove for the planned series (yes, I’ve already planned the series. I can stop anytime I like) and kiboshes a lot of ideas. Though those are painful, the worst thing is about 10K that I’ve already written has to be thrown away. I was so psyched to have that much written and out of the way before I officially started working on it next week.



The good news is that I discovered this while it was a) early in the process and b) still working on something else so my entire production line isn’t screwed up. The bad news is that I start afresh. And I’m not a super writer.

2 comments:

  1. Ugh, scrapping 10k is nooooo fun. Been there, done that. I'm in the dreaded middle ground right now, where I've passed 25k and things are kind of getting boring or muddled. I need to reconnect myself with the characters and their goals. The middle part is always the hardest for me. Sigh. For what it's worth though, I think The Demon's Daughter is a cool title!

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    1. Yikes. That middle place always makes me nervous. Thanks for the title compliment! It took way too long just to decide on it.

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