got writing partner?

My writing partner JB (shameless plug) is AWESOME.

Not only is she an excellent writer of her own merit (see “shameless plug” above), yesterday she proved how invaluable a writing partner can be in the pursuit of, well… writing.

Now most people think ‘writing partners’ are people who are collaborating on a mutual ms. While we have tossed around ideas for this type of traditional collaborative work, we are each currently working on individual projects. I like refer to her as a writing partner because ‘critique partner’ doesn’t even begin to cover her contributions.

Anyhoo… as I’ve mentioned before I just completed the first full draft for Tucker (woo hoo!). During the process I would send each scene to her and she would either email or call or IM and tell me how awesome I was and to keep going (keep moving forward!). As the process moved along, I kept thinking that I’d been hoping for something more substantial, more “this is working, this isn’t” type of stuff. But hey, I was awesome, who I am to argue with such deserved praise?

I am now officially working on the beta draft for Tucker. I sent scene 1 over and got back “it has some problems”. Problems? Whatchu talkin bout, Willis?? So we IM’d, she listed the problems she’d seen, I saw the wisdom in her remarks and I reworked it and sent it back. She sent me another email – “better, but still windy”.

WTF?? Awesome, where art thou??

So I read the very detailed feedback doc wherein she made two lists: keep & toss. She picked out things she especially liked, put them in the keep pile and explained why they worked for her. She did the same treatment for the toss items, but (obviously) listing why they weren’t working for her.

SO AWESOME.

By putting the good up front, it reinforces me codependent need for praise. By telling me why it was good, it will help me keep the standards up as I go along, looking to use strong bits like these to keep the level of writing higher than it should be for a first ms.

Then when I get to the bad & ugly, I a) know I’m awesome and can do this, b) am primed to be open minded knowing she not going to say, “Dude it blows. Don’t quit your day job.” She might mean that, but she’ll give me some solid reasoning behind it.

This morning I had a bit of an epiphany. I’d gotten the “you’re so awesome” treatment on the first draft because the point was to keep moving forward and complete the damn thing. And it was exactly what I needed at the time. She knows me well enough to know that if she’d given me too much feedback I would’ve languished terminally in tightening language that would likely be getting scrapped anyway in rewrites. Make no mistake – I’m rewriting this puppy, not editing. The beta is going to be dramatically different from the DLD. And now is when I need the very kind of detailed feedback I got for scene 1.

No writing partner? Find one. It does a body good.

ugh

Looks like I’m turning out to be the one post a week wonder. I hate that.

 

What I hate even more is the snail’s pace I’m crawling to get words on the page. I’m roughly half way through the book and the villain is laying down some law. It’s REALLY tough because I know how much rides on this sequence. I also know this is the DLD draft and I just need to really block this sucker in and move forward.

 

I have so much respect now for people who have finished novels, published or not. Even those who are published who’s work doesn’t do it for me. They finished and that is an accomplishment of biblical proportions. I’m hoping (fingers crossed) that once I get through this scene, the rest is downhill. Ok that’s unrealistic. Maybe less uphill. I’ll take what I can get.

 

What also isn’t helping is that the last two days I’ve been running around researching and writing up notes on the next book. Yes the next book. I found a story (on accident, I swear!) for Tucker’s sidekick, Sydney, and it’s running around my head like a sorority house on Homecoming. I’m hoping to purge it a bit, so I can go back to where I need to be – Tucker.

 

But man, this next one is gonna ROCK!

wip: Tucker @ 24,229

Another scene down. Big, big happenings, too. Onto the next one now.

KMF…

wip: Tucker @ 18,946

Another day, another scene. Not too shabby, all things considered.

 

I had an epiphany while struggling to start this scene. Changed several key points that had been law up to this point. But the changes are going to make the plot much tighter and gives a real reason for the hero and heroine to have a falling out instead of the classic ‘misunderstanding-that-could-be-solved-easily-if-someone-would-just-man-up-and-pull-their-head-out-of-their-ass-and-ask-the-right-question’ scenario so popular in many romance novels.

 

Now more than ever I am fighting the urge to go back and rewrite the beginning. I mean if I’m this far in and finding new good stuff, I might as well make it to the end and see where I land so I only have to go back and fix it once.

 

Ugh.

 

Keep moving forward…

wip: Tucker @ 16,488

Whew. I beat that last scene into submission. Well… not really. It was going pretty well before but I had to wait a day before I could go back in and finish it. But it’s done. Moving forward…

 

I’m not sure if this process is harder than I thought it would be or not. The “seat of the pants” or “don’t look down” method. On the one hand, I did do up a quick sketch of the beginning, middle and very murky end – about six pages – back before I started this. Heavy notes on the front section and then ending with, “they kiss & make up… they live happily ever after”. Hardly a detailed roadmap. More like, “Hey, let’s go east and see where we end up.” But so far I feel better with this project than any of the ones before and I’m making progress.

 

Except for the fact that my prose is flat as a pancake.

 

My writing partner tells me it really isn’t that bad and to keep in mind this is the underpainting. Once I get the story blocked in I will be going back and editing and layering adding the color and texture. But see, that’s the fun part and I want to do it now.

 

Must stick to the plan.

 

I figured out about 2,400 words ago that my hero was a useless wad; he was a plot device. So I finally figured out how to get him into the story in a way that makes sense and enriches it instead of having him be there merely for the heroine to go, “Hey you’re kinda cute. Let’s live HEA.” I desperately want to go back and rip off the front section and rewrite. More than I can adequately express in words. But that’s one of my usual traps. I “skim” over what I wrote before and end up editing as I’m reading. This method, my friends, does not get you very far.

 

I just checked and it appears I sent out the sketch to my writing partner on April 17th. Today is May 16th. 30 days. 16,488 words. I appear to be averaging 550 words a day. Hrm. That’s discouraging. But then again, I’m only writing a scene every couple of days. I need to really try and get a scene a day. I really want this thing done.