Progress?

ByValerie Comer

If you’ve been hanging around for long you may have noticed that my main wip, Tempest, has been stalled for awhile. I’ve been wrestling with how to fix the problems I see and move forward. And in between I’ve been writing on Dottie and wandering Facebook and Twitter and forums and ignoring the whole mess. And I’d like to write professionally? Um. Not a good habit I’ve slid into.

So ignoring it doesn’t work, and poking it with a stick doesn’t work. What does? I’ve been taking Holly Lisle’s ‘How to Think Sideways’ course for several months now. She’s been covering these mired-in-the-middle novels for the last few weeks. I read the lesson and think, interesting what works for her. That would never work for me.

What DOES work for me?

Exactly. I don’t know.

So why am I paying her for her experience and advice and then dismissing it? That makes a lot of sense. I haven’t got anything to lose by following her plan–and everything to gain. So this week I’ve bought new printer ink, printed out the lessons I hadn’t yet, and began studying the ones I’d only glossed over. I think the reason I wasn’t paying close attention was that it looked like a lot of work. Still does. But at least now I’m applying them and working my way through her steps, starting with printing out the 143 pages of manuscript already written (about 48K). Meanwhile I’m reading through the sample novels she’s included in the course, ones she turfed and started over on, trying to figure out where she went wrong, where she went right, trying to apply the insights to Tempest.

If all else fails, take a pro’s advice. Working on it.

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2 Comments

  1. Hi,

    I know it’s a lot of work but I did it with a novel I am currently working on (the first draft was already done and I just knew something wasn’t right). Now I have a pile of printed paper with millions of comments and I am eagerly waiting to do the corrections (I’ll do it in December since I am NaNoing)

    Cat

  2. Val,

    You have such a way of putting things. Yes, you should not dismiss new techniques before you actively try thing. Fact is that anything new looks strange and unfamiliar. However, that’s the point of taking classes and exploring new techniques. The familiar ones are either working or not, but new ones might be that much better :).

    Good luck with figuring Tempest out.

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progress…

ByValerie Comer

I didn’t have a lot of time to write today, though I did get a short scene down, and some sort of plan made. It’s going to be at least another thousand words or two before Shann and Taafa meet again, and I have a few *worse* things thought up for them in the meantime so that once they find each other, they’ll have to stick it out for a bit. And it will serve them right, too, for throwing me such a curve ball.

I spent the morning working out a powerpoint file for the interdenominational praise service tonight. Somehow I got shanghaied into running the computer. I’ve set the powerpoints up lots of times for our own worship team, but then I run sound and my nephew runs the computer. Anyway, this team moves all over the place, and some of the songs I’m only marginally familiar with, so that added some extra tension to the situation. The real excitment came when the laptop battery died, the person who set it up having forgotten to plug it in. And no that wasn’t me, it’s not my computer and I’ve never played with a Mac before either. Thankfully my friend (who had a choral dress rehearsal tonight)’s husband was right there and sprang into action, immediately realizing what had happened. I guess most of the people knew that song well enough anyway, they kept singing. That was early enough in the service to keep my tension pretty high for the whole thing. Anita can have it back next week, thank you very much. It’s a little hard to worship when you’re concentrating so hard your fingers are trembling and your eyes are bugging. Yeah, I’m sure it’s just me. Put me behind the sound board any day. THAT I can deal with and worship at the same time. Wow I’m tired now that it’s done.

Blogger hates me so bad that I could neither post this in the evening when I wrote it, OR this morning before I went to work. Yipes.

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2 Comments

  1. Valerie, don’t take Blogger personally. It doesn’t hate you. It’s just going through a tough time and can’t meet your needs like it used to.

  2. Jean, was that supposed to be encouraging? LOL. Poor Blogger. (And then it posted it three times and made me delete. I’m learning to check for that…)

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Progress…

ByValerie Comer

Weekends are always so busy that I struggle to stay awake Mondays at work. I got plenty of sleep last night, too. There were a few customers in the morning, but the afternoon was fairly quiet.

I managed about 1500 words of *False Perceptions*. I’m in a confusing spot, because as I was writing, I realized another scene should come first, so I started on that one. So now I’ve got two partially done bits.

I had planned to do a crit this aft (I have two in the wings) but just couldn’t deal with it. Too, too tired to make sense. So I poked and massaged the *Shann* outline some more, and I’m up to 59 scenes. I’ve even found some places to add conflict that don’t require anyone getting captured and escaping yet again (Jean will be glad to know…) I’m about half way through the outline massage, and I know of a couple more places that are looking a little thin, so I’m hopeful to have a decent lengthed outline to start with. Getting closer…

Tomorrow is the second monthly Celebration of New Christian Fiction. If you had a look around last time, you might enjoy this one as well. I’ll post the info in the morning, when I get it all. I think there are more bloggers participating this time than last.

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