School's officially started for me. Meetings all week, learning new duties, refreshing my memory on old ones, catching up with staff. Right now I'm excited, but come back in a few weeks and I guarantee I'll have a countdown of the number of days until winter break.
My CP threw my dreams on the floor and did some ritual dance on them. Okay, no. She wasn't that cruel. (To give her credit, she's the best CP I've ever had and that's why I love her and listen to her!) She assured me that I can write contemporary, but I have some serious revising to do to get there. Okay, again she didn't say serious revising. Those are my words, because after I read through her comments I totally see what she means. And so I had a long, serious talk with myself about where I am, where I want to go within the next year and where I intend to be long-term. After some soul searching, Pro/Con list making and fact retrieval, I've come up with this:
I want to be a multi-genre writer. I have strengths in RS that I've honed over the last few years (and manuscripts), but right now my heart and soul are in the contemporaries. I'm discovering strengths here too that I want to pursue. My orginial reason for starting the contemporary was to explore, expand and understand more about character motivation. While this is still important, I didn't count on getting so sucked into this contemporary. (See previous posts for details.) I used to write a story, rewrite it a few times, start sending it out and then lock it away in a closet somewhere never to see daylight again. Whatever feedback I got on it, from agent or editor, I applied to the next book and I never bothered to stop and revise again. I know plenty of people who say it's not good to rewrite the same manuscript a zillion times, but I think the good writer, the successful writer finds a happy medium between my whirlwind approach and staring at the same thing for months. I decided I want that happy medium for myself.
So, I'm gutting again. Sometime in the next week I'm going to pull out the scenes I think are essential to the story and then I'm going to build again. For the first time in my writing career, I'm willing to take the time to slow down and revise. I don't want to throw this manuscript into the closet. I want to write it the way it needs to be written, tell the story longing to get out and nurture my fictional world until everyone wants to live there!
4 comments:
I work much better with a game plan. If I can make a list for something, I'm a much happier and productive writer. My bestfriend mocks me, but hey, it works for me.
And Kelly, we all have to do what works for us, right?
I think it's good to write a book different from your own natural inclinations. It stretches you as a writer. That is one of the reasons I am writing a cat romance. The other one is that I would like to be a multi genre writer, as well.
Teri
I would like to be a multi-genre writer too, I think it makes you a more rounded writer. I also think you have a great game plan. I never discard a MS - I may lay it aside for a while, but I always come back to it.
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