Beginning Again… Again
Those of you that know me well know that I have approximately three minutes of free time a month. That’s only a slight exaggeration, ha ha. This summer, for example, I had planned to spend all sorts of time doing things for myself. And then my little miss made the All-Star softball team at our local ball field, and we spent six days a week on the ball field practicing or playing (and plenty of time in the car going hither and yon). See, the funny thing is that I thought the older my kids got, the more time I’d have for myself. Y’all should have warned me that was dumb. The older they get, the busier we are.
That being said, I really want to get back to work on my writing. I’m the sponsor of a writer’s club at the high school where I teach, and one of my goals is to use that as an incentive to “force” myself to allot time to write. (I’m terribly bad at making time for everybody but myself, as my insurance company can attest–they routinely call me to fuss because I haven’t gotten basic tests done in, oh, a decade).
Having some time off from my WIP has helped me, though, because I’ve realized how to “solve” a few problems I was having and work through some issues. In Writer’s Club today, I talked with the students about their Book on an Index Card (BIC), a strategy touted by Todd A. Stone in the book Novelist’s Boot Camp. Basically, the BIC is a blurb or summary of sorts. Writing the BIC is very helpful, though, because you stop and think about the core concepts of your novel.
What I realized that my novel was missing was an antagonist.
Yeah, stop laughing. I mean that the character I thought was a great antagonist wasn’t going to work. He wasn’t a strong enough antagonist, and my protagonist ended up absorbing some of the negative feelings you’d normally harbor for your antagonist. I needed a new one. So, I revised my concept. Here’s my new BIC:
When an unstable member of her former husband’s unit abducts her, a young, emotionally devastated, but inventive senator’s wife must use every ounce of her wit to convince her captor to release her and spare her husband from an assassination attempt. Racing against the clock, her own guilt, and her captor’s murderous intent, she faces her internal demons, saves her husband, and defeats the villain.
Now that I’ve got a stronger concept for my novel, I can go back and rebuild the chapters I’ve already got written and have an overall stronger product.
That’s my plan for November. Anyone else doing NaNoWriMo? I’d love to hear your BIC! Good luck and happy writing!
