Friday, August 15, 2008

Rewriting, Again

I’m rewriting The Deadlight Connection once again. How many serious reworkings does this make? I’ve lost count.

So what drove this particular rehashing? The realization that I didn’t have enough conflict between my two protagonists. In the first book of the series, The Archangel Project, Jax and Tobie spar back and forth constantly. In Deadlight, they were getting along way to well. The sizzle was gone. It was…boring.

So I’ve rethought Tobie’s motivations and goals, gone back to her roots, and started rewriting. In the process, I’ve recaptured the characters I loved in Archangel and given this new book a much needed spark. Maybe, just maybe I can finally say, "By George, I think I've got it." About six months late, but better late than never.

How did I go wrong? Distraction, I suspect. This has been a sucky year. But my mom’s in our house now, things are beginning to settle into a pattern, and while I find my writing hours reduced, I also find that in my non-writing hours I’ve started doing something I haven’t done in a long time: I’m thinking about my book.

Which is how I realized I’d lost the conflict between Jax and Tobie, and how important that was for making the book a fun, fast read.

Now, if I could just finish the #@%& thing!

4 comments:

Steve Malley said...

You can DO IT!!!

Glad you put that sizzle back!

Charles Gramlich said...

I know how hard it is to write with constant distractions. In the days before Lana I had to reread and reread constantly the project I was working on because there were so many distractions and had to go back to the beginnning many times. I'm so glad those distractions have lessened.

Barbara Martin said...

A good thing you discovered this now, and not after sending the manuscript out...to be told then it's missing something.

Unknown said...

Ditto what Steve said!

Don't tell me about distractions though!