As per usual I want to write and am frustrated by not being able to. Also frustrating are the doubt crows circling my desk. Some days I honestly don’t know why I bother to push on. The successes are so few and far between that it seems like a masochist’s game to keep at it.

Anyway, in the interests of keeping up some kind of momentum, and after a bracing round of thumping by the CPs (no, not actual thumping but the online equivalent) I have hauled out an old ms to give it a good going over before sending it out to another publisher. The one I thought I’d work on is one that Harlequin really liked and one I completely and utterly stuffed up the revisions for. Hindsight is a bloody awful thing. I haven’t looked at this particular ms for a couple of years because it was the ‘one that could have been’ and that’s kind of painful. It’s one that I did all kinds of things right but because it all happened completely by accident and not intent, I didn’t know what those things were enough to be able to repeat them. In essence, the ms was rejected because my heroine didn’t have enough conflict. They thought she was ‘lovely’ and the hero ‘perfect’ but conflict for her? Uh huh.

Getting it out and reading it again was bittersweet. Bitter because of all the ‘what ifs’. What if I had known what I was doing? What if I’d managed to rewrite it better? What if I’d really understood what the problem was? And sweet because, you know, it’s STILL a pretty good story. At least, even two years later and having learned all that I learned, I think it works.

But the problem? Oy! I saw it immediately in the first chapter where I had written ‘she just wanted to be accepted for who she was’. Now that right there is the heroine’s character arc. And it should be what she realises at the mid-point of the story or even towards the end, not what she understands in the first chapter! Can anyone say too self aware??? And that, in a nutshell, is why she didn’t have any conflict. Because where else can she go from there? What more can she learn about herself? If she knew she just wanted to be accepted for who she was, then why didn’t she go and do something about it? Why did I make her pretend to be someone else? Characters are supposed to think they’re fine at the beginning of the book and part of their journey is figuring out they’re not as fine as they think they are. At least, that’s what I’ve been taught about character arc.

Sigh.

I guess the good thing about this is that the rewriting is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I just have to make her less self aware. I have to make her think she’s fine as she is. She doesn’t need acceptance, pshaw, what a silly thing to think, etc, etc. Oh yes and need to beef up her actual conflict (because she actually did have some, it just wasn’t very clear). And then…then I guess I will have to think about subbing it. Somewhere.

Anyone else hauled out an old piece of writing? Was it as bad as you thought? (c’mon, we ALL think that right?) Or were you pleasantly surprised?

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.

I didn’t rewrite enough.

What I tried to do was to put entirely new conflict into an existing plot structure. I went so far as to write new dialogue and even changed how a scene went. But what I should have done is REWRITE THE ENTIRE THING!

Yes indeedy folks, that would have been the answer. Why? Because with with new conflict, your character becomes a different person. And therefore they would have different responses. Which may mean some scenes are no longer relevant. If you have an existing plot structure, the temptation is to try and keep it, no matter that it may no longer work. And that’s when you run into problems because then you start trying to force the characters into behaving the way you want them to instead of how they actually would naturally.

Ah well, I guess that’s all part of the learning process. And the main thing is that I now have no qualms about starting from scratch. What I need to do is instead of putting new bits into the old, I need to start with a fresh slate and, if appropriate, but old bits into the new. It certainly has been working for me so far. I am rewriting another favourite ms of mine that will be my next sub and certainly starting afresh seems the best way to tackle it. That way you’re not trapped by the stuff you’ve already written. Starting it new leaves you wide open for all sorts of possibilities.

So how does everyone view rewrites? Is it a chance to make your story stronger? Or is it something that would give you nightmares?

Aaanyway, which is why I’d really, really like to hear back about what they think of it right now. Like everyone else with subs out there, right? Think I need to go out on an NTAI spree…

Failing that, I could work on the five other manuscripts that I’ve got festering away on my computer, all in various stages of being re-written. In fact, I seem to have been in re-writing mode for the past six months. I’ve got the initial stages of a new idea but I keep getting distracted by my earlier manuscripts and ideas on how I can make them stronger.

Anyone else re-writing an old manscript? Or do old stories go down the bottom of a drawer never to be heard from again?

So? What were the problems? I’ll point out the things from my climbing story:
1. The internal conflict was complicated for the heroine (again) and my hero was too self aware. There was no clear reason why they couldn’t be together.
2. The two characters must grow from the experience. They must learn things from each other. Again, it wasn’t clear what the h&h learned from each other or how they were changed at the end.
3. I didn’t give any reasons as to why my hero was willing to give up the thing that made him who he was for my heroine. Neither did I make it clear why my heroine would overcome her fear of commitment for my hero other than the fact that she loved him. Why did she love him? Why did he love her?
4. My story was episodic. One scene didn’t lead particularly well into the next.
5. My characters were reactive not active. In other words they reacted to stuff that happened to them, they didn’t drive the story along by taking action themselves.

Phew! Quite a bit of stuff. And those were just the main points. There were other problems too. Fixing all of this was actually surprisingly easy once the faults were pointed out. To fix things I:

1. Gave my heroine some internal conflict that made getting involved with my hero her worst nightmare. Made my hero peripatetic and loving his freedom, who finds my heroine’s need for security claustrophobic.
2. My heroine will learn stuff about herself from the hero and will use what she’s learned to eventually get the hero. My hero will learn he can’t live without the heroine, that her qualities are what’s missing from his life, that he can’t do without them, and what happens to make him realise this.
3. I gave them both qualities that each find attractive in the other. The heroine loved the excitement that the hero’s risk taking brought into her life. The hero likes my heroine’s bravery in how she goes along with one of his schemes even though she deems it risky.
4 & 5. I made the characters decide the flow of events rather than letting lots of outside forces determine the action. This makes them drive the story forward.

I’ve also learned HEAPS about synopsis writing. It really is an art. I thought I had it but no, I didn’t! I am still fiddling around with the current synopsis but it’s much better than it was and is certainly a great blueprint for how the story will follow.

Anyway, I’m all energised and desperate to get into writing. I want this story to be the one!

Once again, huge thanks to Michelle for her time. I really feel like I’ve come a long way since last week!