A Necessary Lack of Focus
So I believe I’ve mentioned I’m not exactly working on that Ben re-write anymore. It’s not because I gave up.
The idea was, I’d get Taro all done and get querying and that would be it for him. (this was the idea long ago, before NaNo at least.) I could Move On. And this I did. Wrote the query, wrote the synopsis, edited one more time, re-wrote the query…and Onwards!
By then it was September, and that’s a rough month for me, work-wise. I go easy on myself in late August, September. After Yaoi-Con (yay, Yaoi-Con!) I worked on planning NaNo and writing backstory.
So. Fast forward a few months. I was stuck in Hiro, my NaNo, and barely made it to 50K because my structure (or my plot, or both) wasn’t working. I decided to give Taro one more polish, for reasons I now cannot recall. Then I moved on to Ben.
It was hard. SO HARD. I trudged forward. I poked. I prodded. I threatened. I stumbled, fixed, changed back, fixed some more, whined a lot, and tried very hard.
Then I got another partial request. This one wanted a synopsis too. Well, of course! I have that! Just let me–oh hell.
Did you catch that? Two edits since I’d written the synopsis. I hadn’t changed the book much–but I had worked to draw out what I’d finally seen was the theme, which was NOT Taro coming out, as I’d always thought it was.
Blast.
So I beat that damned synopsis into submission, and posted it on my writer friends forum for nitpicking. And one friend said, “but…you mention how Eve won’t approve, and that’s not actually in the book…”
Cue the headdesking, but only for a little while. I had Stuff To Do. I fixed the synopsis, fixed the first thirty pages, and went on to fix the rest of the MS in a final Final Edit.
Which I finished tonight. The changes on paper are done, and 60/235 are entered.
So. I should be back to editing Ben soon. Only I’m going to take it easy on myself, and read some books too. Would you believe all I’ve read of Neil Gaiman is his Tweets? Time to change that. I have six books from the library, five by authors I’ve never read. Several of those are by writers of color as I seek to get out of my rut.
Because, did I mention? Ben, whom I’ve been writing for years, has suddenly taken the face of an acquaintance who happens to be Afghani. I’m not sure what to do with that yet–Ben is the only one of my characters actually raised up in a faith, and that faith is Christian–but I’ll figure it out.
Eventually.
