Monday, October 31, 2011

beginning the beginning again...and again...

My readers are probably already completely sick to death of my first two chapters.  I know I certainly am, anyway.  I think I rewrote the first chapter at least three times last week and sent it off for them to read each time.  And each time, I wasn't completely 100% happy with it.  I'm still not sure I am, and I rewrote it one last time yesterday- well, not entirely.  I fixed the transition part that was bothering one of the readers, mostly.  But I did add in a whole new first chapter that's only about 1/3 of a page long.  The book starts from a different perspective now.  Late on Friday night an idea arose that perhaps I should add a few random chapters from Anna's point of view.  Might be an interesting little twist, no?  Her chapters won't be anywhere near as long as Riley or Ella's, just little snippets here and there.  I really like this idea the more I think about it, too.  Thoughts, anyone?

I think I'm done editing through chapter 7 at this point, too.  I know the word count was just over 16k when I finished up last night, so I'm about a third of the way through.  I'm trying not to nitpick too much at this point and just fix the parts that have changed slightly since all my new ideas came about.  The major editing will be done when the book is complete, and hopefully I can still manage to finish up the first draft by the holidays.  But we'll see- I'm not going to put too much pressure on myself.

I don't know why I have such a difficult time writing the opening pages!  Seriously.  I went through this exact same dilemma with IMME, ultimately scrapping the entire beginning and starting completely fresh.  I've already done that with this WIP for the most part, too.  I'm a lot more satisfied now than I was after the first rewrite, so hopefully after a few more edits it'll all fall into place.

In life news, today is me and Dan's 8th anniversary of being together.  It's crazy to me to think we've been together for so long!  But really, the time has flown by.  We've been through a lot together already and I look forward to what else life has to throw at us.  Hopefully all good stuff from here on out.  :o)

No comments:

Post a Comment