Every time I go through the material with him, I get a charge out of him as a character — and out of where he’s going. I need to move through about a hundred pages of revisions today, but the Baanraak stuff is holding up really well. Not sure how the rest of the day’s revisions will go; I’m crossing my fingers.
And I can’t wait to do the next book, where Baanraak and a few members of Earth governments and US agencies will come face to face.
I’ve been having a hell of a time getting to the new pivot scene. I was scared to write it.
Yesterday, I took a deep breath and dove in, and the scene happened for me. There were points where I was crying so hard I had to quit typing because I couldn’t read the screen. I finished the scene — it’s a long one — and had to quit for the day. I felt like I’d been run over by a truck.
But I reread the scene today, and it’s there. The feeling I had while I was putting the thing in words transmuted itself to the page. There’s always this dread — especially when you’re working quickly — that the scene in your mind is not getting all the way through your fingertips and that the result is going to be thin, or muddy, or just dead. But the funny thing is, when you think about the writing the least — when your fingers are flying and the tears are dripping onto the keyboard and you have to stop from time to time to wipe your face on your sleeve — that’s exactly the time that the scene leaps to life in one take, and breathes, and rips your heart out of your chest and devours it whole.
Writing should be like this all the time — only if it was, writers would only survive one or two books, and would then die of exhaustion and too much joy.
Hit the pivotal point in the revisions yesterday — the point where the old material has to tie in and prep for that great idea Matt had. Had to rip out whole-cloth two whole scenes and a chunk of a third. And then wrote 2442 words of new material that made a pretty good dent in setting up the new work. So I still had a significant net loss in words for the day, but since I’ve been adding heavily, that’s no doubt a good and necessary thing.
Today I’ll finish that crux scene, and the worst of the revision work should be over. And muttering “Famous last words” at the idiot fingers that just typed that last line, I walk into the brave new day.
I am, as mentioned previously, removing one subplot and swapping it out for another that is a thousand times better. I’m almost done with that portion of the rewriting. It was not, after all, a subplot that ran all the way through the book. But yesterday I progressed in inches, not miles. Every couple of pages, I was ripping out one whole scene and handwriting a whole new one. I did eighty pages of revisions (rather than the planned ninety), but I don’t even have the heart to count all the handwritten stuff. Yeesh.
The workload should be lighter today.
And if you haven’t been by Sheila (S.L.) Viehl’s blog lately, you need to go have a look. One of the most interesting blogs around. Space rants, shopping with characters, knot art, quilts, writing, medical stuff, more writing. Seriously cool.
I’d intended to work on both projects, but revisions were calling louder. (They’re what I’ve been working on so far this morning, too.) I got through over ninety pages of material, including about fifteen handwritten pages of new material. I get more words on a handwritten page than a typewritten one, by the way, so it was a pretty prolific day, too.
And I was talking about the revisions with Matt — something I rarely do since I am inarticulate to the point of incoherence when trying to discuss a work in progress verbally — and told him about the way I planned to fix one of the problems Diana had pointed out. I managed to get through my explanation, and he nodded, thought for about three seconds, and said, “I’ve got it. This is even better.” And gave me an idea so breathtaking and so moving I get tears in my eyes every time I think about it. It’ll take some rewriting to incorporate, but … damn … will it ever be worth it.
Today, revisions exclusively. I’m in tight focus mode, and having too much trouble shifting gears into the other book, with its different characters and rules, to expend the effort. I’m about three days from finishing this if I just stick with it. So for the next three days, I think that’s what I’ll do.
Yesterday, wrapped that tough scene with the villain, and even got started on the next one. And got through all the adding-backstory elements in the revision of The Wreck of Heaven. Did not do a wordcount on either project — number of words in this instance was less important than just getting through it.
But today, I have clear fields for both Midnight Rain and TWOH. Nothing like a good writing day to make the whole world seem brighter.
Start count today 45,193 on Midnight Rain. I hit that complicated scene with the villain, and still haven’t nailed it to my satisfaction. I’m not going to set a wordcount goal on it today — my goal is going to be to get that scene right. It’s important, demonstrating as it does both the villain’s psychic link with the heroine and the amount of power he’s able to bring to bear against her. I want it to be scary — really scary — and that might entail going through it a couple of times.
It feels like one of the key scenes in the book.
As for revisions of The Wreck of Heaven– blech! I still have more haiku novel to do today, because I ended up deleting the entire “Prologue Approach” as a bad go. (I wrote and then revised an entire prologue as my second attempt at a fix yesterday. This after writing an “In Book One” treatment and realizing that wouldn’t work, either.)
I hate prologues. I don’t read them in other people’s novels and I certainly don’t want to write one in a book that I like better than almost everything I’ve ever written to date. I want the story to start with the story and I want the book to stand on its own. I think I managed to start a workable approach fairly late last night — I’ll have to see when I go back in to reread yesterday’s work.
Yesterday hit fairly high on my Work Frustration Index. I’m hoping today will go better.
I’m now trying to work enough of Memory of Fire into the opening pages of The Wreck of Heaven that people who don’t read the first book won’t crash and burn trying to figure out what the hell is going on in the second.
Introduction of backstory is my absolute least favorite re-writing chore. Everything else pales in comparison to invisibly slipping a plot summary for a whole novel into the first five pages of the next one without resorting to “As you know, Bob …” or choking the reader on an indigestible lump of exposition.. Bleh.
And because this is a series, not a trilogy, I can’t even resort to the “Book One, Book Two” summaries that I did for The Secret Texts. Assuming Eos wants them, I want to do seven novels in the World Gates universe that will each pretty much stand on its own, but that will rely on shared worldbuilding and common characters — or a handful of common survivors, anyway, knowing my tendency to thin the herd about mid-book.
Haiku Novel, take two.
Better than a thousand words on Midnight Rain, bringing Alan and Phoebe together romantically while driving a wedge between them as a team against a common danger (they don’t know it’s a common danger yet); and on Wreck of Heaven, rework the manuscript (or as much of it as I can get to in one day) to introduce the improved driving force behind Lauren’s assault on the gates of Heaven to get Brian back. It’s the best reason someone could actually risk everything, and its strong enough that she would have gone to Hell to get him for the same reason. And she doesn’t seem selfish anymore for using this tremendous power she has to go after a dead husband just for herself. I’m excited. And it won’t entail huge changes in the book either — a line here and a line there.
I love revisions that make huge gains for minimal output. 
Some of the other stuff I have to do to the manuscript is much harder and more labor-intensive, of course. But I figure that shower idea probably saved me ten hours.
Yesterday was a writing train wreck — 1149 words done on the romance (Midnight Rain, or MR). Nothing else.
Today my goal is just to get some more done on MR — 2000 words or better. I’ve found out that my editor won’t be able to read the revisions on Wreck of Heaven until after the 22nd of next month. So I’m not going to kill myself getting them done quickly.
Still haven’t heard anything on Talyn.