So now I’m wondering if entering my writing into contests is really a good idea. I knew my chess hero wouldn’t get anywhere because he’s a very polarising hero. He’s damaged and hard and screwed up. He’s a love him or hate him kind of guy and sure enough one judge loved him and one judge hated him. Perhaps if I’d played it safe and softened him up, he would have done better in the contest. Perhaps that’s what I should be doing with all my stories.

This is why I’m wondering if I’m making it harder for myself. Because I don’t like safe, tried and true conflicts. I like difficult, dark conflicts. I like flawed characters. Because they’re interesting and when they overcome their difficulties, the emotional pay off is that much more intense. But it IS hard to pull off and some readers just don’t like reading that kind of stuff.

It’s a conundrum. My chess player was, I think, the first character I’ve written that truly came alive to me in my head. Who made me see that my characters in previous stories were amalgams of forced together traits and conflicts, like a badly put together mosaic. But he came together really organically, as a whole person, and just leapt off the page at me. I never had to question what he would do at a particular moment in the story because I always knew, because I knew HIM as a person. He has a special place in my heart for precisely that reason and when I write now, I remember how his character came together and if I’m not feeling that way about the characters I’m currently writing then I know I have to stop and think about them some more. I must admit though that when I wrote it, I did wonder if I should pull back on him. But then to do so would have been to make him someone he wasn’t and I couldn’t do that.

So I guess that’s my conundrum, do I play it safe with the tried and true and make it easy for myself? Or do I keep writing about the characters and conflicts that interest me and perhaps make that publication goal harder? What would you do?

*Number of times entire ms rewritten – 3
*Number of times beginning rewritten – 6
*Size of ‘deleted scenes’ folder – 227k
*Number of times hero/heroine conflict changed – 3
*Number of times I wanted to kill hero/heroine – 20
*Number of tantrums pulled while writing – 50
*Number of times I wanted to give up in disgust – 100
*Number of times I DID give up in disgust – 100
*Number of times cried while writing – 5
*Number of working versions of present ms – 8
*Number of titles decided on – 0

So there we go. That’s my chess player in a nutshell.

I know, some people are probably going to think I’m out of my tree for writing a chess playing hero. Probably some editors are going to think I’m out of my tree too. Perhaps I am. But one thing’s for sure, I’ve learned a hell of a lot writing this monster, about conflict, about pacing, about tension, about character. And most especially, I’ve learned to be able to tell when I’m holding my characters back and not letting them do what they want to do.

Who knows if anyone bar the CPs will ever get to read it? I hope it gets somewhere. If not in print, then on screen. I really do. But at this point in time, I’m simply not able to assess anything about this story. 

I don’t know if it’s good. I don’t know if it’s bad. I know I like it. I know I like my cold bastard hero and my stroppy, explosive heroine. 

Perhaps at the moment that’s enough.

Currently my Chess masterpiece is becoming the new never-ending story. A month and a half on the first three chapters. Longest. Time. Ever. And you know what? I think I may have to can those chapters. Why? Because they are based on an earlier incarnation of the conflict and now do not have any relevance to the rest of the story. They involve the heroine and hero working together. But they never work together again and their conflict is not based on a work situation. So why have I still got them working together?? How does it forward the conflict? It used to, but since I’ve fiddled with the heroine’s conflict, it doesn’t anymore. Argh!!

Sigh. This is becoming a watershed ms. I think I’ve learned more writing this than I have any other story. More about my process, more about what I’ve been doing wrong in previous stories, and more about how to fix the things I’ve been doing wrong. At least, I think I’m fixing things. I could be making it worse of course but the only way of knowing that is by sending it away. But I can’t do that until I finish the damn thing.

This is why fixing an old ms can be harder than just writing something new, especially if the problem was character and conflict. I mean really, given the amount of rewriting I’ve been doing, I’ll just say that in fact, this IS a new ms. Because changing a conflict or changing a character can have wide-ranging effects. A character that acted one way in the beginning, may not act that way after the change. And if the plot is based on what the character does – which is most category – then what the character does will in turn change the plot. Can anyone say nightmare?

Anyway, what else can I do but keep chipping away? And hope that soon my ogre will start looking less like this:

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