I TOLD YOU I WAS ILL!

That's reassuring - despite me being off-line for a week I have still had a few visitors to my blog. Welcome to you all, and thank you!
I've been a bit off-colour and the old brain cells aren't functioning properly. My sight's blurred and my fingers forget how to type, so there have been some very strange words on the page that even I have been unable to interpret,

But enough of that - discussions of ill-health are boring. Cue cute photo of bored baby.

I am trying to decide what to do next. First there is this blog to maintain - my own - and the one month A-Z challenge is coming up - should I join this year or not? Last year I was keen and had half of it planned out in advance. This year I think I've got too much else on my plate.

I have had two short stories issued on the online magazine http://runningoutofink.com and am in the process of submitting another, I've entered a few short story competitions and even written a poem or two, but my main job had been, and still is, the re-write of A Volcanic Race, the first novel I ever wrote. Even that has a sting in the tail, as I  allowed myself to be persuaded to blog about the process on http://shortbreadstories.com  And with my various ailments - those boring ones, remember? - I haven't got on as fast as I would like.

And now I have heard from an agent who likes my novel Helter-Skelter enough to have given me detailed feedback and will look at it again if I address the issues she raised. It#s great to be told I am "An exceptional writer" but devastating to get yet another refusal. Yet I am so near with HS that I shall have to do what the agent asks and "Have another bash at it" - once I've got A Volcanic Race out of the way.

D'you reckon the Doc might have some pills to make me an instant genius?

One small sad tale to end with - my grandsons' cat died last week. RIP Marley.

KNOWING WHEN TO STOP

I've had a bad few days struggling with my re-write of A Volcanic Race, and I think it's time to STOP, step back and think about the entire concept.

My daughter has been reading he first twelve chapters and says I have made Tomboro a much stronger character, so we're going to sit down over a coffee this afternoon and thrash out some strategy for the rest of the book.

It doesn't help that I'm not feeling well - pain and depression and lack of sleep tend to dull the creative urge - but a blood test next week may throw some light on my raft of symptoms and by association, on my book..

So instead of bashing away at chapter after chapter, I am going to take a long hard look at the second half of my book and decide what major changes to make.Maybe I even need to write something else, something new completely from scratch, to re-awaken my creative rather than my editorial side.



One spooky thing did happen when I was on my walk yesterday - I saw this notice to Loro Parque. They've acquired a pair of sea-lions and one of them is called Khali = so is one of my characters! Is this an omen?

Does anyone else get this feeling of staleness after working on the same book for so long? How do you deal with it?

RE-WRITING Helter-Skelter

Gosh, this is hard work!
I am re-writing my novel Helter-Skelter. An agent was keen enough on it to say I could re-submit if I made certain changes. My initial reaction was, as you might imagine, that I thought it was perfect as it was, but on reflection and after a good long think, I could see the agent's point of view. A good story that needs more work.
The plot is the same - the main character keeps his identity and his eventual fate remains unchanged - but I need to shift the emphasis.
In effect this means re-writing a lot of the book whilst keeping the same goal in mind. I have to strengthen the plot and squash my tendency to resolve difficulties too quickly. I dislike confrontations but they make a story more interesting, so if A falls out with B they must remain at loggerheads rather than resolving their differences too quickly.
But there are also passages - indeed, whole chapters - that hardly need changing, and that's what's so hard. Shifting from one gear to another - editing and tightening up one day, removing entire characters and swaths of extraneous waffle another day, re-writing and inserting a whole new plot-line on a third.
The agent was complimentary about my writing, as others have been, which helps to keep my spirits up, but my brain hurts!