Because I must get a proposal done before Nita is finished, I have started on a new book. Yeah, I’m not thrilled about that either; I love the book but balancing two narratives in my head is not a good idea, especially since one is overworked and the other is nascent, but here we are. At least it’ll make a nice change for you all since I’ll be bitching about Alice (aka Haunting Alice) instead of Nita (aka The Devil in Nita Dodd).
So what’s a proposal you ask, and how am I making one for Alice? (You have to ask because I need a blog post.).
I’m finishing up Nita and working on a proposal for the next book, which I’m thinking will be Haunting Alice. It’s so much fun looking at something new, figuring out plot points, slapping together a synopsis that will inevitably change radically, making research lists, and then there’s the collage . . . . I do love Nita but it’s been four freaking years and that’s too long on a book, at least for me. Plus I’m done with demons for awhile. Very shortly it’s going to be ghosts and magic and butterflies and reality as perception not fact. SO. MUCH. FUN.
Today is Rivers Day.
Jeanine asked:
That whooshing sound you heard was September rushing past. At least I did manage to read new books this month–the Raven Boys series–and a lot of recipes. I also started on the Unfuck Your Habitat Book which I get back to as soon as I get at least one proposal to New York and finish Nita. Which I have been saying for months. I haven’t watched TV in weeks, either. I’m going to have to take a break to get a story fix pretty soon. ARGH.
I’m working on several proposals and a novel and thinking about building storage in my future bathroom now. I’m finding that I really love open storage in the kitchen and it make sense that I’d like it in mh closet, too, except that my closet is also my bathroom to be (it’s 9′ x 10′, there’s room) so I have to think this through. Also I still have that Suncatcher Shawl to finish, and I think I’m going to take the dogs into the side yard, clean off the lawn chaise, and bask in Indian summer while I finish up.
Here’s the problem with Act Two: It’s 45,000 words long. Even with allowing it to go to 30,000 (usually my second and third acts are within spitting distance of 25,000) that’s still 15,000 words I have to cut. That’s sixty to seventy pages. That is not something you can do by just dropping scenes. That’s rewriting. And because a book is like a machine full of cogs, every time you delete/change/add a new scene, another cog in the book moves somewhere and changes something else. Acts One, Three, and Four are in good enough shape that once I get Two done, I just have to read from the beginning and find out where all the cogs slipped in the rewrite. But Act Two is being a PITA, so I must go in and rewrite now. (You can stop reading now because the rest of this is just a description of what I’m doing, mostly so I stay on track. Do not expect brilliance.)