May Take A While #IWSG

Happy May everyone! Today, my parents have been married for 48 years. Woot! I hope you join me in wishing them a very happy anniversary.

I didn’t accomplish much toward my personal goals in April. We had our big launch at work, followed by a frenzy of fixes and tweaks. It didn’t leave much mental processing available for things like plot problems and story issues.

And I have those aplenty. Book 2 had me announcing it was a flaming pile of poo while I spiraled into a depressive funk caused by all the rewrites I know await me. You’d think I was a perfectionist by how much I’ve put into this book. I’m not. Seriously. But a critique group member had repeatedly stated how valuable he found Brandon Sanderon’s talk on Plot, and I had to go listen to it and see what I could apply. There were aspects I felt I conquered in previous rewrites, such as structure and circling back to themes. But promises, progress, and payoffs?

I found I was lacking in the “progress” portion of the alliteration. I’d made promises about my main character where he has to step into a role he really doesn’t want. He evades it for 75% of the book—first intentionally, then unintentionally. It’s the unintentional part that’s the problem. I dropped all focus on that subplot because he wasn’t around the entity who was hounding him to step into the role. I see now how that’s a problem.

That’s just five more chapters added to my rewrite list. *sigh*

IWSG Question of the Month – Has any of your readers ever responded to your writing in a way that you didn’t expect? If so, did it surprise you?

Does my sister-in-law telling me she absolutely hated my first-draft main characters count? I certainly hadn’t been expecting that.

Do you ever try to apply new knowledge to an existing project? How did that go? Are you making progress with your work?

About Insecure Writer’s Support Group

You can find the sign up for the IWSG here. We owe Alex J Cavanaugh a huge thank you for thinking this blog hop up.

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