Leaving Well Enough Alone
By A.J. Llewellyn
Writing is a funny thing. I can go back over each and every book I've written and find places where I could have improved things. I've asked other writers this and all agree…especially when it involves our earliest works.
As a college professor once told me and the rest of our class, "even Casablanca isn't perfect" but I am not sure about that!
I turned in a new story over the weekend and it's a very personal one…I guess they all are, butIf Come, which is based on a situation that just happened to one of my dearest friends is one of those that I…well…just cannot leave alone.
If Come came to me when my friend Lizzie signed an If Come deal with a major movie producer. I'd never heard of it before but loved the name. An If Come deal is when a writer signs a contract with a producer who will shop his or her screenplay and if it comes to pass that it's produced, he or she will get extra benefits for having signed such a deal.
It's like a dream…will you wake up and find it's a) real, b) a dream or c) a nightmare?
I had fun writing this story and fell in love with my characters but dammit, I've now sent two updated drafts to my editor who has been very gracious about the updates.
However, I wonder why this book won't leave me alone.
I'm not sure if it's because the whole rigmarole of pitching screenplays to studios is so personal to me since I've based the scenes in the book on my own experiences…or if it's that…well…I just want to keep hanging out with these characters. I grew to love Zam and Dominic and they will not get out of my head.
I think this is why we authors write series. We fall in love and never want the dance to end.
These men keep chattering in my mind and they keep…doing things to each other. I can be driving and Zam and Dominic do something so cute it has to go in my story. Am I crazy or is this normal?
How about you? Do you feel this way? Just curious…
Aloha oe,
A.J.
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That's what shorts are for. :) I love when the characters give us little peeks into their lives further on down the road. Intimate pictures of the most mundane things can sometimes be so touching. In my experience (with another author) it can be highly effective even if it's so short it's a freebie. Every time you choose to share a thought of a moment with us about characters we love, it brings back all of the feelings we had for them when reading the story in the first place.
I kinda like what LDL suggested. I love shorts freebie's and anything i can get my hands on.. even the little everyday things are special to some of us weird readers. I also understand the need for perfection. But sometimes striving for near perfection takes away from the writing. the minor errors(spelling, grammar or otherwise) are darling in a sense. I like finding them because it makes the reader human and not a robot trying to produce produce produce. I adore all your books no matter the size
Thank you both for your comments! You've given me something to think about for sure...
I meant that it makes the writer more human not the reader.... Lack of sleep does that to me lol.. i like finding the little things in a story.. sometimes its a big thing but it makes the book and the writer more of a human to be.. However i am nuts so i dont know how good my advice is lol
I want to be clear, I'm not saying you need to give things away, only that if a scene pops into your head that doesn't have enough to make a story, it can be great marketing to post that as a freebee. One of the little things I remember is Sean Michael's Jarheads' Dry Erase grocery list and recipes. He managed to bring the characters into something that simple. For whatever that is worth.
