A.M. Jenkins's Blog, page 28

I seem to be tiptoeing into the Paris section little by l...

I seem to be tiptoeing into the Paris section little by little. I have no idea how I'm going to write it without devolving into light steamy romance. Not that I have anything against light steamy romance--it just wouldn't match the rest of the book. Will have to give the matter some thought.

I've been consistently freaked out by how much work I'm d...

I've been consistently freaked out by how much work I'm doing on the days when I'm stuck in the library with son #2's laptop. I sit there in a study carrel with nothing to look at but the screen from before 8 a.m. till after 12:20 p.m.. There's no way to check e-mail, no way to go off on a net-surfing tangent. No dogs, no cats. I can't get up and wander around or even go get a drink of water unless I pack everything up and carry it with me. So I sit and work. And it turns out you can wrap you...

Have been working on filling in some missing pieces in th...

Have been working on filling in some missing pieces in the middle of the book. I don't really know what needs to go in there, so I'm mostly just messing around, trying stuff out, dabbling. It would be nice to have focus and purpose, but if I'm lucky maybe something I'm doing now will eventually lead to focus and purpose. If not, the pages of dabbling will have to be scrapped.

But you know, if so, wtf else is new? It's not like I haven't scrapped a goodly portion of what I've worked on in the p...

Trying to work myself up to writing. Am suddenly overwhel...

Trying to work myself up to writing. Am suddenly overwhelmed with the pointlessness of it all. I look at the ms and think, WTF am I doing?

Nobody's going to care. Nobody's interested in your puttering around in boring subtleties of personal relationships. They might be interested if you'd kill somebody off, or have characters beat each other up. But what you're writing is about as interesting to read as a checkbook ledger. You might as well spend your time watching reruns of Wife Swap...

For some reason I woke up this morning and decided I had ...

For some reason I woke up this morning and decided I had to cut the baby again. I don't know why I thought of this, but it suddenly came into my head that the narrative is a straight line and somehow the baby complicates or deviates too much. Right before the baby enters, the story is focused on subtle abuse in a relationship, and it rises to a clear mini-climax where the MC is changed. So it seems like maybe I'm switching gears with the baby, like I made a point and now am diluting it by hea...

Worked on former GN today; may be able to work more later...

Worked on former GN today; may be able to work more later, but I'm not counting on it.

I was thinking more about the sample and how I moved the timeline around. If that actually works--if it's readable and smooth and the time jumps don't lose the reader--it does a great favor to the ms as far as pacing and tension. What it looks like right now is this:

1. Present time:
Intro MC
Set scene
Set her problem (boyfriend dumped her; she's sad)
End mid-scene on a conclusion the MC draws abo...

Finally got the sample sent off. I realized at what felt ...

Finally got the sample sent off. I realized at what felt like the last moment that probably it'd be best to take the big, obvious hook from the synopsis I was given, and use that to end the first chapter. Because otherwise the story would be heading off in a misleading direction.

The problem was that this meant not going in chronological order. Shades of my swordfighting ms! I immediately had flashbacks of the horror that came from mismatched plot and emotional story. The dead ends, the lack o...

I got in about an hour of work on Friday, but yesterday--...

I got in about an hour of work on Friday, but yesterday--when I should have been working all day and gotten a ton of writing done--I avoided writing totally. It was stupid to allow myself to do that, and shamefully unprofessional since I have a deadline.

I did, however, manage to see all four stages of Ninja Warrior. I've only been able to catch episodes with the first stage before, but with concentrated effort yesterday, I watched all the way to the end of one of the contests. I'm not sure wh...