I thought I was done. But every time I write, The End, it keeps pulling me back in!
Actually, most of the book is set. It was just the ending I didn't like - and mostly because I'd done so many changes to the beginning and middle that the old ending just didn't gel with the rest of the book. So while I've been consciously trying to ignore the novel, to pretend it was finished, I have been idly sort of wondering what I'd do to improve the ending if I ever was to possibly, maybe, go back to it. Just idle thoughts, I swear.
What actually prompted me to revisit the ending of In Full Measure was the beginning of Summer House, Winter House. While I hadn't actually painted myself into a corner or anything, I realized that I'd dropped so much momentum at the end of In Full Measure that there was almost no way to start the second book without it being really flat. In rethinking the beginning of the second book so that I could make it into a stand-alone story, I realized that everything I wanted to do pointed to changing the ending of In Full Measure.
And so, a couple of weeks back, I actually had a sort of breakthrough - a way to change the ending of In Full Measure that didn't require a whole lot of rewriting (more of moving things around) but that created a lot more suspense and action scenes and allowed for a great set up for the second book. As a result, I decided to leave it alone for a while longer until I was sure that it was what I wanted to do.
This weekend, I figured out how to definitively start the second book and that, in turn, has locked in the changes to the ending of the first book. *whew*
To make a really long story even longer, I will begin working this week on the rewrites and the final, final, final version of In Full Measure.
On top of all that, I've sent off the first three chapters of In Full Measure to someone in the publishing biz who wanted to read them and will hopefully offer me some advice on how to improve the beginning of the book. May this be the first step towards publishing - sometime in my lifetime.
Of course, its hard to publish a book that isn't finished yet. So I need to get back to the writing. I can feel the headaches already starting.
2 comments:
Everyday, a little bit and you'll get there.
Cheers.
I had two good things happen yesterday. First, in talking over the changes with my Dad (the only person beside myself to have read the whole thing) I found that he agreed with every change I was going to make. A first. And second, in starting the final draft, I discovered that in four chapters I only needed to change about three lines - and mostly because of typos. If the rest of the work goes this easily, I'll be done before my cruise next week.
HAH! That was a good one!
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