Sunday Update: A Fun Week!
My singular goal is paying off. I know where I need to focus my attention, and my plan for Queen Witch is unfolding before my eyes. Have I said before that I love my brain? Oh, come on. I know I've said it before. Trusty smooth engine makes so many decisions while I'm not even focused on my story, that when I come back to it, I know what needs doing.
The hard part of this novel is the timeline. It starts when my witch is 14, because some pivotal stuff happens then that sets up the storyline for the trilogy. But then I'd picked up again when she's 16 -- and I've since decided that a LOT of what I wrote in that section just sucks the energy right out of the story, because she's learning, and there's not enough action. So, on my three-month break from Queen Witch, I'd decided I would skip the remaining teen years, and pick up again right about her twentieth birthday, when she's accepted as an adult among her family and really begins to serve, and to rebel.
This week, I went through that entire, painful midsection of my book and decided what to do with the scenes there. Some of that stuff will be rewritten to work in my new timeline, but some of it is just scrap. So this week my project is to dissect my manuscript, moving everything that really doesn't work to a new file, called "scrap." So that's how Queen Witch is going. I'm making progress.
The other reason this turned out to be a fun writing week was a discovery I made as I perused my old writing files in a particularly creative mood. I found two short stories that were pretty much ready to go, and that I remembered only dimly. As I read them, I got more and more excited by this find! I posted the shorter of the two to my blog on Friday, so that's the post after this. I'd love to hear some ROWer feedback on that short, so please give it a read and let me know what you thought.
I sent the other story to a few writing buddies to get opinions, and they all liked it. So now I'm trying to decide what to do with it, and I'm thinking I may release it as a short, adding in the other story as a bonus in the ebook, for $0.99. So this brings up a question. I've heard the short story is back, thanks to ebooks and reader attention spans. What do you think? Do you like short stories, and are you willing to pay $0.99 for them, when you can buy full novels for that price? I will thank you for any insights.
Have a great week, and I wish you luck and fun in your writing tasks!
The hard part of this novel is the timeline. It starts when my witch is 14, because some pivotal stuff happens then that sets up the storyline for the trilogy. But then I'd picked up again when she's 16 -- and I've since decided that a LOT of what I wrote in that section just sucks the energy right out of the story, because she's learning, and there's not enough action. So, on my three-month break from Queen Witch, I'd decided I would skip the remaining teen years, and pick up again right about her twentieth birthday, when she's accepted as an adult among her family and really begins to serve, and to rebel.
This week, I went through that entire, painful midsection of my book and decided what to do with the scenes there. Some of that stuff will be rewritten to work in my new timeline, but some of it is just scrap. So this week my project is to dissect my manuscript, moving everything that really doesn't work to a new file, called "scrap." So that's how Queen Witch is going. I'm making progress.
The other reason this turned out to be a fun writing week was a discovery I made as I perused my old writing files in a particularly creative mood. I found two short stories that were pretty much ready to go, and that I remembered only dimly. As I read them, I got more and more excited by this find! I posted the shorter of the two to my blog on Friday, so that's the post after this. I'd love to hear some ROWer feedback on that short, so please give it a read and let me know what you thought.
I sent the other story to a few writing buddies to get opinions, and they all liked it. So now I'm trying to decide what to do with it, and I'm thinking I may release it as a short, adding in the other story as a bonus in the ebook, for $0.99. So this brings up a question. I've heard the short story is back, thanks to ebooks and reader attention spans. What do you think? Do you like short stories, and are you willing to pay $0.99 for them, when you can buy full novels for that price? I will thank you for any insights.
Have a great week, and I wish you luck and fun in your writing tasks!
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