It seems as though I may have something akin to a “reader” at last, but I have some problems. I only gave her the first chapter and the second chapter is when things get spicy.
Even if she is ok with the spicy material, I’ve decided to totally rewrite much of the second act so…the clock is ticking. I’m going to have to hurry up. I can’t keep dawdling like I have been for so long.
I actually need to focus so I can give her something to read if she is still interested by the time she reaches the second act.
I’m a little nervous about her thinking I’m some sort of creepy weirdo when she reads the second chapter — the scenes in question are kind of spicy! But she’s young, so, who knows. She may be cool with it.
She was surprised when I mentioned that my heroine would go back to stripping again in the novel, so that makes me uneasy. But I guess I just have to power through and see what happens.
Oh boy. It’s time to wade into the “fun and games” part of the novel now and it’s going to require a lot — A LOT — of rewriting. So, I’m just going to chill out for a little bit today before I get into it.
It’s been about a year or more since I looked at this copy and my storytelling ability has improved so much that I keep thinking up ways to rewrite the text. And that September 1st deadline is looking less and less likely.
It definitely seems like more like February or March will be when I actually wrap this thing up. And I should be working on a backup story, just in case. But I still can’t bring myself to do it for some reason.
Oh boy. Now we get into the part of the new version of the novel that may slow me down some. I’m going to have to cogitate about some meta elements of this novel when it comes to structure.
Naomi Scott as my heroine in the movie adaptation? A boy can dream.
And there’s a lot of rewriting to to do.
So, it’s possible that the relative breeze the first act has been is a thing of the past now that I’m getting into a part of the new version of the novel where I am going to have to rewrite things a lot.
And that doesn’t even begin to address the issue of once I finish the novel, I’m going to go through and read the thing all over again to ensure consistency. It also doesn’t help that I continue to do all of this totally by myself because I have no friends and no one likes me.
But I really do enjoy working on this novel and I’ve learned a lot that I can use with other novels down the road. The learning curve for other novels won’t be nearly as sharp.
If I actually manage to finish this novel and successfully query it, it’s definitely going to be something of a miracle. I just hem-and-haw about some pretty important elements of this novel all the time.
One thing I’m struggling with right now is how the beginning of the second act seems more structured as if it’s the end of the first act. I could very easily lop off maybe 30,000 words and re-arrange things that way.
And, yet, I’m not quite prepared to do that because I don’t know how many words the entire thing is. So, I think I’m just going to wade through the entire new version of the novel, rewriting a lot as I go along, then look at the word count and THEN decide what I’m going to do.
I think my near-term deadline is July 4th weekend. That is a “take stock” deadline. If I’m anywhere near wrapping up things, then I know I’m ready to query this fall instead of the spring.
And, as always, I continue to idly think about all these scifi novels I want to work on. And now that I’ve finally solved The Impossible Scenario, even that is an option as to a potential novel.
Anyway. I need to stop staring out into space and actually get some work done.
I know a guy who writes plays all the time and also novels and he has YET to sell a novel after years of trying. This gives me pause for thought because he’s a journalist who is a far better writer than I am.
And, yet, I have to be comfortable with the right to fail in a rather spectacular fashion. And the further I get into querying then that is experience that maybe I can use that to get a little further in the next attempt.
Anyway. I still am struggling with the overall structure of the novel. I keep being tempted to lop off a huge chunk of the first act, and, yet, there is value in what I depict in the first act.
I just don’t know.
I’m going to continue to wallow in the first part of the second act in an effort to tighten the novel up in some way. But I guess the trigger to cutting a lot will be when I finish the novel and it turns out to be 160,000 words.
If it is that long then I definitely will start to lop off words here and there to see if I can get closer to 100,000 words.
I have a structural problem with this novel that I don’t know what to do about. I now have a strong first act, and, yet, the case could be made that it takes too damn long to get to something happening.
So, my goal now is to reread the first half of the second act and see about how I can rewrite or edit it to be better. I think what I’m going to do is go all the way through the novel and if it’s just too long, THEN I will lop off a big chunk of the first act of the novel and restructure the rest of it.
But given the weird structure of The Girl Who Played With Fire, it’s not impossible for a unconventional structure to be a success.
Yet I continue to be uneasy about word count. I continue to worry that maybe this novel is just too long and I’m really going to have to tighten things up some.
I’m getting into crunch time now. If I don’t focus it will be a year from now and I’ll still be spinning my wheels at exactly the same point in the novel I am now.
So, I’m hoping to focus on rewriting the novel a lot more in a more focused way in the coming days. I’m going to — hopefully — buckle down and actually get myself where I need to be ASAP.
I just want the opportunity to fail in querying, I guess. I want to flame out and then piviot to working on some of the scifi novels I’m been brooding on for some time now.
My dream of being a published author started officially about a decade ago now. But the specifics of that dream were very, very different back then. I wanted to write a scifi novel using elements of what I called “the Impossible Scenario.”
But in fits and starts, over the course of the decade, I finally settled on something totally different.
The actual novel I’m working on right now is set in late 1994, early 1995 and is meant to be the first of a four novel project.
Anyway. The point is — being an author is a lifestyle. Just because I haven’t managed to get into the querying process just yet doesn’t mean I’m not an actual author.
So. I have wrapped up some scenes — for the most part — in the early part of the first act. Now, I can breeze through the rest of the first act (again) until I get into the second act of the novel and yet again find myself wallowing in reworking things to fit my new vision.
The first act — which is pretty much the cherrypicked elements of an entire novel I could save in the context of what I’m doing — is almost done, I think. As done as I’m going to allow myself to think it is until I go through AGAIN and edit everything for consistancy.
I gave the first chapter to a would-be reader today. I wish she would be my regular reader, but I have *very* low expectations on that front. I just never can find someone to read my novel on a consistent basis outside of a few people who are graciously willing to do so. And I have lost one person recently who I think was disappointed in me for writing something so spicy.
I’m kind of uneasy about what happens if my would-be reader wants to read the second chapter. The second chapter is when some — spicy — things happen in the novel and I can just see because of the context of what’s going on the young woman I gave the first chapter to read getting turned off by what she reads in the second chapter.
It’s not smut, but it is spicy and maybe a bit provocative. And I pushed the first spicy scenes as far into the novel as I could. Turns out it was the second chapter. I keep thinking about pulling the first spicy scenes out of the novel altogether because I’m afraid they come across as gratuitous, but then I keep them in because I like them or they help the structure of the novel.
I probably will, no matter what, rewrite these specific spicy scenes before the process is over because I know I can write something better. I can’t be one-and-done with the spicy scenes just because writing them takes a lot out of me.
An elderly woman also wanted to read the novel, but I told her she could when I finished it — she just isn’t the audience of the novel and I’m afraid she’ll be really offended or flummoxed by the spicy scenes. So…what’s the point?
I just feel a little bad for snapping at her when she asked, I guess. I hope no harm no foul. She’s an otherwise kind old lady. I just would rather not get sucked into having deal with her reading the novel as I write it and her complaining that there’s too much sex in it.
So. I’ve pretty much finished the first chapter. Almost. At least to the point that I feel comfortable showing it to people who, of course, will inevitably never get back to me about what think think about it.
Anyway, it’s now the second chapter that I’m having trouble with. I understand what has to be done, but the actual process of doing it is a real pain in the butt. I have juggle a lot of different things in my mind because I have more than on POV within a chapter.
This is something turns off a lot of readers, but people read Stieg Larsson’s work and he did that, so fuck those people. Just don’t read the fucking novel, then. Those kind of quibbles really annoy me because the whole point of some elements of the way I’ve structured the novel is to draw in people who *did* like — or could at least tolerate — how Larsson went back and forth between different POVS within a chapter.
I just need to clear my mind and write some scene summaries before I actually do some writing. I hope to zoom through the rest of the first act after wrapping up the first act, then in the second act….oh boy, do I have a lot of writing and rewriting to do.
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