Picking Up the Pieces
I spent the past couple of weeks focused on wrapping up the biography of my dad. I'm still waiting for comments from some of the folks I interviewed. But having heard from some of them, with no inputs, I'm guessing the others will likely do the same. So, I edited and put the finishing touches on that book. To be published in July.
This weekend, instead, I turned my attention back to my novel, Rich People's Problems.
When last I'd written in it, almost a month ago, I had realized that the major climax was happening on page 100. Much too early. I had gone back to several of the chapters and broken them up, with the intention of adding content to the earlier parts of the book, pushing the climax to later in the page count.
This three-day weekend has been full of doing just that. And I'm pleased to report that - finally! - the storyline is flowing more easily. Ironically, I wrote about the novelist protagonist having problems writing. Not so ironic, I guess, though she's nothing like I am, in real life. Fodder is fodder, after all.
Anyway, one of the main issues had been that, in my original dream, the relationship between Anna and Andrew, while distant in the recent past, had never been contentious. In my drafting of the novel, though, I had created a tension between them. Based on the Raggedy Ann taunt one of Andrew's friends had made when they were teenagers. It had been bothering me that I changed this crucial plot point from the situation in my dream, where Anna goes to Andrew specifically because she knows he can sympathize with negative publicity, having experienced it himself.
But when I was writing, and having come up with a title for the book, it just made more sense for Anna and Andrew to be at odds. And the childhood taunt also made sense, Anna being much poorer than the Johnsons and their friends.
But it was bugging me. It's not often that I have changed such a major part of the plot.
But today, the writing came together. And I like the new direction. So, whew.
And I added about 20 pages to the beginning of the book. Not sure the climax is far enough along yet. But things are better than they were.
This weekend, instead, I turned my attention back to my novel, Rich People's Problems.
When last I'd written in it, almost a month ago, I had realized that the major climax was happening on page 100. Much too early. I had gone back to several of the chapters and broken them up, with the intention of adding content to the earlier parts of the book, pushing the climax to later in the page count.
This three-day weekend has been full of doing just that. And I'm pleased to report that - finally! - the storyline is flowing more easily. Ironically, I wrote about the novelist protagonist having problems writing. Not so ironic, I guess, though she's nothing like I am, in real life. Fodder is fodder, after all.
Anyway, one of the main issues had been that, in my original dream, the relationship between Anna and Andrew, while distant in the recent past, had never been contentious. In my drafting of the novel, though, I had created a tension between them. Based on the Raggedy Ann taunt one of Andrew's friends had made when they were teenagers. It had been bothering me that I changed this crucial plot point from the situation in my dream, where Anna goes to Andrew specifically because she knows he can sympathize with negative publicity, having experienced it himself.
But when I was writing, and having come up with a title for the book, it just made more sense for Anna and Andrew to be at odds. And the childhood taunt also made sense, Anna being much poorer than the Johnsons and their friends.
But it was bugging me. It's not often that I have changed such a major part of the plot.
But today, the writing came together. And I like the new direction. So, whew.
And I added about 20 pages to the beginning of the book. Not sure the climax is far enough along yet. But things are better than they were.
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