Much as I hate to admit it, my progress has been slow this past week. I rewrote and restructured the first three chapters of Facing the Music in less than a week, but by chapter four I was stuck.
Lately, I’ve been having a lot of trouble with not caving to the Inner Editor voice when the writing itself slows down, or where I get temporarily stuck on something. Part of the reason I completed my rewrite so quickly was because I learned how to put my head down, fast draft each chapter, then clean it up enough to move forward. But for the purposes of this revision, I’m not so sure that that strategy is going to work.
If I’m going to really dig deep and reshape the big picture plot stuff or correct my characterization issues, then I need to do more than just blow through each chapter and clean it up later. I need to sit down and consider what each scene is going to accomplish, what information I need to reveal about my characters, and whether the dialogue or description I’m fussing with is actually going to propel the story forward.
So after this week, I’m starting over. I’m going back to chapter one and I’m going to take a good long look at my MC and his situation and how he’d be handling it. I’m going to take the time to put myself squarely in a wintery mindset, even though summer’s right around the corner. And I’m going to hope that a slower and more thorough revision will produce a better story than racing against myself would’ve.
We’re almost to May, bootcamp participants! How’s everyone doing?