The best laid plans of mice and men...

I have come to believe that I have time management issues. I had every intention of having A Dream and A Kiss ready for release by mid-March. Well, here it is mid-April, and it just isn't ready yet. I regret that I must push the release back a few months. I'm really, really, really hoping to have it ready by mid-July. However, I won't release it until I feel it is the best possible version of the story that I currently have the ability to write. Although I'm still relatively unknown as an author, I believe I owe it to my audience, myself, and my characters to write to the best of my abilities.

Good news, though! One of my beta readers told me today that Warner Ellis is now her new literary crush. Swoon! I mean, he is pretty dreamy. He has the strong, silent, sensitive thing down. I have really enjoyed getting to know him and translating his journey through his world to the page.

I let myself get distracted a fair amount. I have a full-time job and a couple recurring social events. Often times, I'm mentally fried by the end of my work day, so if I get a full page written in the evening, I think I'm doing pretty well. And then this happens when I am in the zone and ready to get some work done:

 

He's "helping" Mom do her work. Ugh! Thwarted. And he looks so offended when I put him down and get back to what I was doing. 

Plot holes and rewriting

I have recently realized that I have a few plot holes in my story. Plot holes that are big enough to drive a Mack truck through. This is why it is good to send your work out to someone to edit and beta read before throwing it up online to self-publish. And here I thought I was almost done.


No...I'm really not almost done. I have had to go back and fill the plot holes, which has caused a few continuity issues. So, I have to go back and fix those. The worst part of this, I have found, is when I have a line that is so awesome I want more than anything to keep it...only it no longer fits the story. I can't move it around, because it won't make sense anywhere else. But it no longer makes sense within the new context of the story. Ugh! Cut it!


Heartbreaking, yes, but also necessary.

Editing Madness

I have a confession to make. Evidently, I have a problem with run-on sentences. Alternately, sentence fragments <-- (see what I did there?). My editor has this cute little trick where she'll look at me and say, "I'm going to read a sentence to you." Inevitably, I'm blushing by the end of it. Writing is fun.

Editing is hard work.

I'm grateful to my editor and my beta readers for catching these little issues. Inconsistency in writing, continuity issues, point-of-view jumping...all things I'm guilty of from time to time.

Just in case you are thinking that my manuscript for A Dream and a Kiss is a train wreck, I'll have you know that one of my beta readers did tell me that it was the cleanest first draft she has ever seen. Though I have some things to clean up and polish, the story is solid. I'll take that for now.