Singularity

I’ve seemed to have miscounted, misallocated or heck just plain misunderstood.

For months and months and, dare I say, months I have been droning on about the three storylines in The Hushing Days (troublesome novel #18).

Which plot is the lead? Can there be co-plots that share equal time and equal sweat? (My sweat, mind you; the three plots did little more than bask languidly in my obsessive attention) Can an ensemble historical romance be successful in a publishing world of lone storyliners?

You’ve suffered through these machinations with me. You know the pain.

Well, guess what? There’s only one freaking storyline.

One.

ONE!

Yesterday, in some cosmic moment of everything coming together and singing “We are the world”, the three plots merged into one glorious tale.

It would have been beautiful if I hadn’t wanted to strangle its whole nutty one-ness!

*deep breath, deep breath*

I’ve got a week left to get this thing done and no more rabbits better pop out of this hat. Just saying.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe

Late Bloomer

Remember a few months back when I’d rattle on incessantly over which of the three storylines was the lead in The Hushing Days? I tell you, I worried that conundrum down to a bloody nub. Of course, I never came up with a definitive answer. (Do I ever in these OCD-led rants?)

Well, 90K words into the novel and I finally have my answer! (No snickering, please. A late-bloomer is still a flower, after all.)

In the end (nearly literally, in this case), these questions work themselves out. Sometimes authors (especially those on an absurd amount of Prozac) over-evaluate the technical things.

My advice? Don’t sweat the tech. You’re an artist not just an engineer.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe

Seedy Intentions

There are always seeds rattling around in my pocket. Little specks of storylines I like to plant in the soil of a manuscript’s early chapters.

This is all well and good… when you’re actually writing Chapter One.

However, when the cogs of progress have churned sufficiently to crank the novel into edits, this seed-laying mania is a bit not good.

Case in point: As I’ve reported this week, I have decided to jumpstart the editing of The Hushing 

Days by abandoning the corrections of Chapter Seven and turning my eraser and white-out to the always challenging Chapter One.

So, while I’m editing away at the chapter, adding this and that while marking out a whole bunch of other, I keep finding myself reaching for the seeds in my pocket…

Bad, bad author!

The editing process is not the time to add tangents, side roads or off-shoots.

Plant one seed in Chapter One and you’ll be tending it the whole novel long.

This is not the time, girl!

Or so I keep chiding myself every time I stick another storyline into the ground.

*sighs*

Maybe the 2050 book market will be hungry for a 300K The Hushing Days? One can only hope.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe