I Still Live…
… despite the best efforts of whatever plague my husband brought home.
I swear. Everyone warned my that my toddler would come home inundated with disease when we sent her to daycare. So explain why the last three times we got sick, it was from people in the office! Thankfully, the toddler escaped the stomach bug, so my mother took her Monday and Tuesday so I could just shrivel away to nothing in peace.
Unfortunately, instead of being able to use Wednesday and Thursday to catch up on the writing I couldn’t get done before, I spent it training new people at the office. Not a hard job, but I think they might frown on me writing borderline steamy Fae romance at work when I’m supposed to be an example of professionalism.
The good news, though, is I have today to get to writing. I also got to spend the weekend working with the responses my Beta reader gave me for Wolves and Rain to get the last draft finished before I send it off to my editor in October. She pointed out a lot of small details I never thought of, and helped me really pin down some of the issues.
See, when I first wrote Wolves and Rain, it was a duet. It was past tense, third person POV from strictly Selena’s story. That thing was a whopping 140,000 words, not including the companion book I was half finished writing from Dominic’s side. I split it in two, figuring I’d make the series a saga instead of a duet. I also remembered dual POV and present tense are things people can do, and that flows way better.
The problem is, for all that I thought I caught all the inaccuracies, I missed several. Also, without some of the scenes I cut, Selena doesn’t come off the way I want her to. The best example I can give without spoiling is when my beta said, “She’s too smart later to be this dumb now.”
These are things I don’t see as someone literally in Selena’s head all the time. I know why she’s doing this, but I need to make sure I put in lines and details that make it clear to an audience without hanging a flashing sign over her head that says “Wasn’t Hugged Enough As A Child”.
All in all, this week was another wash, but not a total one. I still got a lot done and have more to go. The Oliver Notion account I have now is set up completely with everything moved over. I tried out a few new writing options over the weekend, but nothing really stands out to me. I need something I can write on a web version at least, which cuts out several options like Word, Google Docs (not allowed on the work computer), and Scriviner. NovelPad’s done well for me, but my kingdom to do away with subscription services and to just have one time payments for things again.
For the next week, I’m still working on Lucky and Moonlight and Storms a bit since I’m hoping to have the Wolves and Rain series finished by the end of this year so I can start publishing next year. I might get some work done on Ace of Swords, but I’m trying to be realistic. Until I get a lot of writing and publishing under my belt, no publishing company is going to sign onto a series that’ll be, bare minimum, 50+ books. Those are probably going to need to be self-published. That’s fine in the long run, though. I can make it work.
Hope you all have a wonderful summer and, coming from someone on the other end, take a deep breath and appreciate if both your nostrils aren’t stuffy. You never appreciate that feeling until it’s gone.