Okay! I feel much better now.
Last night, after posting, I had to read through my new wip Heart on Fire to remember that I have been busy, and not slacking at all – the product I’ve created is just not precisely what I planned. Balance is a good thing. You can only do so much rewriting before your eyes start bleeding and you begin to think you suck and will never make it. The creative drive takes a back seat during rewrite time, and it becomes intense WORK. You go back over these words you’ve written and realize that this could be more effective and that doesn’t fit there at all. And so you fix it or take it out, and then boom – that simple change has a domino effect throughout the rest of the story. Change one motivation in the beginning – say you initially envisioned your hero being a cranky bastard, and he turns out so much nicer (or better motivated to be cranky) on the page by the end of the book that the beginning of the book no longer makes sense (not that this happened to Cyrus – no, he’s exactly what I meant him to be – HAH!). So going back, you think it will be a quick fix to make him more consistent, and boom – making him smile on page seven when the heroine makes a smartass comment – rather than rolling his eyes or shooting her daggers – this has an effect on what she thinks of him in the following pages – it makes a difference how she reacts to him in the next scene and the next, which in turn, shapes how they BOTH react to the plot events as they unfold. If he’s nice to her, she’s probably going to be nice back unless you give her a good reason not to be… which is entirely possible, but adds a whole new layer to the first hundred pages that I wasn’t counting on taking six months to rewrite.
When you think about it like that, I guess I’m not doing too badly. And the bonus is that while I only thought I was working on point 1 that the interested agent made, I’m actually working on point 3 as well, which was the authenticity of the relationship between Cy and Freedom. I haven’t actually had anyone test read the changes yet, but I’m thinking I might be ready for some feedback on how I’m doing.
