Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Can You Hear Me Screaming?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Okay, this is the point where you've discovered a partial novel that you started a few years ago, you've read it through, you've edited it and added a couple new chapters and printed out a nice, polished hard copy and now you take a break. Rummaging around,you find an old legal pad with a few pages of sketchy handwritten notes so you start reading them and tick marking places where you've already included that thought or idea or scene in the text. And THEN you realize, from reading the rest of the notes that you wrote that this novel is NOT going in the direction you'd originally planned it to go, and where you are now is NOT where you really ought to be because it will work so much better following the original game plan. Therefore, in your head you are screaming so loud you think the entire world must be able to hear you...NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!.

Can you hear me screaming?

Tomorrow, after sleeping on this huge disappointment, I will be essentially scrapping 33,000-plus words, 64 single spaced pages and starting this novel as a blank slate because this one got off the block fast but lost momentum just past the first turn.

The good part is that I may be able to salvage parts of it as I go and incorporate those chapters into the new and improved version. Plus I also did a lot of character development since this past weekend and know these characters and how they'll act and react. And I even did some research on herbs and witches and related matters. Maybe something better will come of this in the long run...but still I needed to get this scream out of my system tonight.

Tomorrow is a brand new day...I need to keep telling myself that.

Tomorrow is a brand new day...

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