La Vie Boheme

Still here, still writing (well, editing anyway)

I think stopping short story submissions for a time was a good thing. I don't feel as stressed or as discouraged, and I'm spending some good time focusing on editing The Exile's Daughter. That said, I'm starting to eye my pile of stories still in need of a home, thinking about sending one or two out soon.

I'm still feeling my way through this whole editing process. Taking things in small chunks. Currently I'm going through the ms. scene by scene, finding issues with the timeline (which I was incredibly careless about) and POV (which I was weirdly distant about with some characters). I'm not to the rewriting stage yet. I'm still analyzing and finding out what needs fixing.

The good news is, I still like it, and I think the major flaws are very very repairable. I'm much more organized this time than I was when I tried to edit The Host, so there might actually BE a second draft of this one. I'm tempted to set a deadline for myself, but I think that will wait until I've actually started rewriting--which I think will begin perhaps around Christmas. (So, tentatively, a second draft finished by the end of January?)

There are some amusing issues going on, aside from the non-amusing issues of there being no clear timeline of events and not being inside the head of a few characters.

Amusing:
* Apparently no one in this novel wears clothes. With two exceptions, clothing never gets described. Ever. I am the Anti-Laurell K. Hamilton.
* Also, with few exceptions, the characters live and work in a background of vaguely painted backdrops, like in a bad high school play. So yeah, the setting needs some work.
* The last scene of Chapter 8 is officially and without a doubt the Exposition Scene from Hell. 4500 words (which is a freaking LONG scene) comprised of almost 100% exposition from Jack's mother. Just smack in the middle of the book. The funny thing is, I really enjoyed writing that scene. I did not, however, enjoy reading it.

Something else that occured to me the other day, and folks who are familiar with my roleplaying life will get this. I realized that Alex's story is very much like the story I wanted to tell with Aislinn. Father dead under mysterious circumstances, daughter left to deal with the legacy of her parents, and with a growing sense of her own power and place in the world... it all fits. Elizabeth, now that I look at her more closely, is so much like Jake (in some ways, at least) it's a little scary--which explains why her scenes have so much more of an emotional impact. I'm a little weirded out by this realization. I gotta stop stealing from myself.