*screams*

That folks is the sound of thirteen thousand words being deleted. Such a great start to Nano huh? Writing this reunion story has been like pushing the proverbial excrement up the proverbial hill and yesterday I was going to give up the whole story in complete disgust and wander around wailing and rending my garments. But in a last ditch effort, I followed a bit of advice handed out by CPs and a few lovely blog readers, and wrote a scene that occured in the past – the black moment where my couple’s earlier relationship broke up.

Now this, my friends, is a most excellent way to go and if you are having conflict issues and can’t work out a character’s history, writing it out is extremely helpful. Of course, in writing out this particular scene, it has resulted in the loss of 13k. So perhaps helpful isn’t quite the right word. Still, better to know the problem now than in another 40k or so when I would have to rewrite the entire story.

Anyway, the problem was I had started the story in the wrong place and made the hero do something he wouldn’t, thereby creating a lot of complex backstory, with lots of offstage revelations, just to get him to do what I wanted him to do. I thought he realised breaking up with the heroine the first time round was a mistake but it wasn’t until I wrote out some of his past that I realised that he didn’t think it was a mistake. He thought he did the right thing. And it’s not until he meets her again that he realises he didn’t.

And so I’m having to start the entire story again. It sounds horrendous to get rid of all those words and it is, but the start I had won’t work with the conflict now, and if I keep going with it in its current form, the entire story will probably fall to pieces. Probably. I don’t actually know of course until I start writing it but one thing I am certain of, if the story feels too hard to write then there is a problem with it.

Still, depressing start to the month I have to say. Anyone have other depressing deletion stories?

On a happier note, big congrats to Leah, winner of the New Voices comp! Fabulous news, m’dear. We’ll have lots to celebrate next RWAus huh?

And you know what? I had an inkling I was doing something that wasn’t quite right and yet I pushed on. Complained to Dr Jax later that night, that I felt I was forcing them to have a conversation they didn’t want to have. And he said, “Why are you doing that? What do they want to do?” My rebuttal to this was that I knew perfectly well what my characters wanted to do but they couldn’t because…because…well, they’d just have another love scene and shouldn’t they be getting further along with stuff by now? Dr Jax’s reply was ‘So? Eventually they’ll have to stop doing what they’re doing and that’s when the conflict happens.’.

Argh! Maybe I should get my husband to write these things instead… Anyway, the wretched man was right. I was trying to get my h&h to have a conversation that they shouldn’t have been having – they’ve only known each other two days, waaaaay too early to be sharing stuff about their dead/hideous parents! My intention was to further their conflict without a love scene because I’ve been trying to avoid the whole ‘sex without emotion’ trap. But of course, love scenes CAN forward the conflict and up the tension so why didn’t I just do that in the first place??

I have no idea. But after deleting the 4k and starting again with the love scene, it was MUCH better. Would you believe my ‘deleted scenes’ folder is now nearly as long as my actual ms??

So, what’s your biggest deletion? Bet you can’t top mine – this ms is on its third complete rewrite.