Subplots Falling Like Flies

I am up to 30,000 words on the revision of Anything But a Gentleman and very nearly at an end of the sections I will have to write from scratch. As in, the next scene or two I write might well be the last. Thank God.

I had a thought a week or two ago while driving to work, about more events that could simply be cut out in order to streamline the narrative a little better. It took a bit of mulling on the matter and rolling the new vision around in my head for a few days, but ultimately I realized that I had a darling in my sights. I could shoot to kill without regret.

It was a short intuitive leap from there to realizing that a whole sequence of events that took place basically at the point of integration for old beginning/new beginning were pretty contrived (“plotted”) happenstances rather than natural and organic occurrences that led from what came before. When I took them away and grafted the new beginning to a point a little later on, like a surgeon cutting out a diseased piece of intestine, everything still made sense and still worked – in fact it worked better. The revised sequence of events was cleaner, tighter, and kept the focus a little better on the couple.

I will say that re-thinking the transition between Act I and Act II made me realize how much work I still have to do on the hero and heroine’s interactions and relationship-building, but in a good way. I am both excited to work on those scenes and excited for what enhancement means to the story overall. This story really was one I had to construct all wrong in order to comprehend enough to construct right.

I had meant to cease work on this and start work on the project I mentioned last post in June. Well, today is May 31. I feel like I had a breakthrough today, and I am loath to squander that. I am sure I’ll find new shoals to wreck on soon enough, eh?

One Month Later

As predicted I am at least physically well again. I feel like I’ve finally gotten into a good balance again, where I am not stressed out and exhausted all the time, and I have a little time in the course of a week for my own pursuits. It’s been a long time since I’ve had this kind of equilibrium, so I don’t take it for granted. I am doing my best to enjoy it, while keeping one eye open for the next shoe to drop.

It’s possible that I will be the shoe. I might get pregnant again (we aren’t necessarily trying again yet, but we’re not strenuously avoiding, either). We might finally start making moves on the move. And, if nothing else, I have a project that I’ve mentally committed myself to finishing by the end of the summer – regardless of if I have to drop other work unfinished – that is going to take a lot of focus and dedication to complete. My GOAL is to finish revising the novel and send it off to betas who can then take their sweet time with it, and shift focus to the other, but if I can’t get the novel revision finished in the next month or so then I’m going to have to abandon it again in favor of the new one.

Really it’s a new old one – another piece that needs to be revised and expanded but that has a solid base from which to build. It’s not a romance, nor is it something I will directly be discussing here much. It’s a project that I think would actually benefit from being traditionally published, therefore it would be done under a separate name and not one that I would cross-reference in either direction. I have thought long and hard about how to handle it. If it’s as good as I think it is (and as a friend who is knowledgeable in such things says it is) then I might be able to gin up an auction from several publishers – and THAT is a scenario an agent would be helpful in making happen. I have a short list of agents I would be willing to work with, and a list of editors who have shown a passion for this type of book to approach directly if none of my acceptable agents are interested. I would still be entering any agent and publishing negotiations with self-publishing the book as a fall-back position. There are certain terms that would still be deal-breakers, even if some that I would not accept for my romance career would be okay for this one-off project. I am genuinely curious to see if anything comes of my attempt to find a trad-pub home for this project, both in terms of publisher interest and my ability to actually sign away rights and control.

I don’t know how regularly I’ll be blogging this summer, but I am finding myself with posts I want to write bubbling up inside, so perhaps I can at least get back to once a week or so. Onward and upward!