Update
Hey you guys, sorry for being so late with updates!
I hope everything has been going well for you guys and 2014 has been better than 2013!
For me, things are quite a bit different. Work has been hectic, I was moved to another team and now I'm working on three accounts instead of just focusing on one so I had to learn the ropes and then there was a mass firing (I wasn't let go) but we were given additional responsibilities so I've just been focusing on staying on top of everything in my main job.
Writing wise I've been doing a lot of thinking, not just about IWOAK but my other completed stories that I should have rewritten and revised but haven't gotten very far on. It doesn't make sense that I'm having such a hard time to get really into the writing/rewriting of finished stories (WDC, IWOAK) or stories I already have major plot points figured out (FFYT, OMN).
The main issue is the mind set I'm in now versus the mindset I was in when I started. When I started When Doves Cry I was 17, and about 21 for IWOAK. My writing style has changed (for the worse in some cases, but I will fix that once I start writing again) as well as the way I think certain things would go down.
For example, based on how close Judi is to her mom, at sixteen she would've definitely had told her that some strange boy she met at a houseparty was blackmailing her into a relationship. She trusts her mother implicitly and truly believes that she can handle anything thrown at her, the fact that I had her keep it a secret wasn't true to the character I was trying to build.
However 17 year old Judi, starting university younger than all her classmates and already feeling too childish to stick it would try to handle it herself, if only to prove she's not a child and to try and keep her parents from making her move back home.
I get to keep the fact that she's basically a baby but put her in a setting where certain actions and scenerios are more realistic. And I'm finding that AJ is really shining as an 'older character'. He's 19/20 but you can see how the whole situation with his family has hit him a lot harder here then you do in the original.
I just really need to get the voice down. I want the same casual tone but I need it to be a bit more distinctive and for Judi's rambling to show through without it dragging on.
I have the opening done but I'm not feeling it. I'm also rereading the original and making notes from there, subplots I want to keep, cut, or transfer to Missy's story instead and man, kudos to all of the people who reread that book regularly. It is massive.
I mean, it's over 100,000 words and it took me way too many years to write, but I never really took in how big it was until now. I need to take a picture of it all printed out so you can see how huge it is. I'm definitely going to make it tighter and quicker paced in the rewrite, hopefully I'll still be able to set the scene/characters the way I want.
Fall For Your Type is surprisingly going well, Missy and Vince are behaving though I'm going to put it back on hold as it doesn't make sense to write it when IWOAK is going through such major changes.
Read about my thoughts on my WDC progress or lack there of beneath the cut.
**IMPORTANT: If you're reading/rereading IWOAK, get it done before the end of the month. I'll be taking it down sometime during the beginning of May since agents/publishers are not fans of works being up for free and I'm doing my best to take this whole thing seriously. **
I don't know how many of you have ever read When Doves Cry (although, since that's the story that got me a large portion of my original audience I think probably a fair amount) before it got taken down, but I've finally figured out where I got stuck on the rewrite/edits.
Originally, the main character gets sick and the disease I chose to give her was something I found frightening but was curable. I wanted something that would be scary but you had a chance of 'winning' against it, however, for someone whose body was a driving force for the thing they love to do (dance) the cure might be worse than the disease.
So, I chose cancer. Research for that was a lot harder than I thought it would be, there are a lot of survivor blogs and even blogs of people who have terminal cancer out there, there are blogs from people who have had family with the disease and then there are the articles. There's a lot of access to it but reading about these people's lives was hard to do and it felt invasive at times, so I browsed and then closed out and did my usual 'if my so and so had cancer, if i had cancer, if, if, if...
My grandpa was diagnosed with cancer in 2010 (officially, he was sick for a while before) he beat it, then it came back in 2012 and he passed away. I have a older cousin (more my mother's age than mine) who was diagnosed with cancer in his twenties and it kept coming back, he died suddenly a week before his birthday in December.
Every time I've tried to work on WDC I can't because it just feels very shallow and not too close to home, exactly, but I'm not comfortable doing it.
As such, this is another story that'll be getting a 'face lift'. The basic plot will be the same but the disease will be different as well as the setting. the way I write this is also going to be different. I'm going to keep the alternating POVs but I think I want to show the progress of their friendship over the years as well and make it clearer why there doesn't appear to be any backlash about their relationship. (There is, but they've gotten so used to ignoring it over the years to the point that when they actually get together they don't even notice it.)
I hope everything has been going well for you guys and 2014 has been better than 2013!
For me, things are quite a bit different. Work has been hectic, I was moved to another team and now I'm working on three accounts instead of just focusing on one so I had to learn the ropes and then there was a mass firing (I wasn't let go) but we were given additional responsibilities so I've just been focusing on staying on top of everything in my main job.
Writing wise I've been doing a lot of thinking, not just about IWOAK but my other completed stories that I should have rewritten and revised but haven't gotten very far on. It doesn't make sense that I'm having such a hard time to get really into the writing/rewriting of finished stories (WDC, IWOAK) or stories I already have major plot points figured out (FFYT, OMN).
The main issue is the mind set I'm in now versus the mindset I was in when I started. When I started When Doves Cry I was 17, and about 21 for IWOAK. My writing style has changed (for the worse in some cases, but I will fix that once I start writing again) as well as the way I think certain things would go down.
For example, based on how close Judi is to her mom, at sixteen she would've definitely had told her that some strange boy she met at a houseparty was blackmailing her into a relationship. She trusts her mother implicitly and truly believes that she can handle anything thrown at her, the fact that I had her keep it a secret wasn't true to the character I was trying to build.
However 17 year old Judi, starting university younger than all her classmates and already feeling too childish to stick it would try to handle it herself, if only to prove she's not a child and to try and keep her parents from making her move back home.
I get to keep the fact that she's basically a baby but put her in a setting where certain actions and scenerios are more realistic. And I'm finding that AJ is really shining as an 'older character'. He's 19/20 but you can see how the whole situation with his family has hit him a lot harder here then you do in the original.
I just really need to get the voice down. I want the same casual tone but I need it to be a bit more distinctive and for Judi's rambling to show through without it dragging on.
I have the opening done but I'm not feeling it. I'm also rereading the original and making notes from there, subplots I want to keep, cut, or transfer to Missy's story instead and man, kudos to all of the people who reread that book regularly. It is massive.
I mean, it's over 100,000 words and it took me way too many years to write, but I never really took in how big it was until now. I need to take a picture of it all printed out so you can see how huge it is. I'm definitely going to make it tighter and quicker paced in the rewrite, hopefully I'll still be able to set the scene/characters the way I want.
Fall For Your Type is surprisingly going well, Missy and Vince are behaving though I'm going to put it back on hold as it doesn't make sense to write it when IWOAK is going through such major changes.
Read about my thoughts on my WDC progress or lack there of beneath the cut.
**IMPORTANT: If you're reading/rereading IWOAK, get it done before the end of the month. I'll be taking it down sometime during the beginning of May since agents/publishers are not fans of works being up for free and I'm doing my best to take this whole thing seriously. **
I don't know how many of you have ever read When Doves Cry (although, since that's the story that got me a large portion of my original audience I think probably a fair amount) before it got taken down, but I've finally figured out where I got stuck on the rewrite/edits.
Originally, the main character gets sick and the disease I chose to give her was something I found frightening but was curable. I wanted something that would be scary but you had a chance of 'winning' against it, however, for someone whose body was a driving force for the thing they love to do (dance) the cure might be worse than the disease.
So, I chose cancer. Research for that was a lot harder than I thought it would be, there are a lot of survivor blogs and even blogs of people who have terminal cancer out there, there are blogs from people who have had family with the disease and then there are the articles. There's a lot of access to it but reading about these people's lives was hard to do and it felt invasive at times, so I browsed and then closed out and did my usual 'if my so and so had cancer, if i had cancer, if, if, if...
My grandpa was diagnosed with cancer in 2010 (officially, he was sick for a while before) he beat it, then it came back in 2012 and he passed away. I have a older cousin (more my mother's age than mine) who was diagnosed with cancer in his twenties and it kept coming back, he died suddenly a week before his birthday in December.
Every time I've tried to work on WDC I can't because it just feels very shallow and not too close to home, exactly, but I'm not comfortable doing it.
As such, this is another story that'll be getting a 'face lift'. The basic plot will be the same but the disease will be different as well as the setting. the way I write this is also going to be different. I'm going to keep the alternating POVs but I think I want to show the progress of their friendship over the years as well and make it clearer why there doesn't appear to be any backlash about their relationship. (There is, but they've gotten so used to ignoring it over the years to the point that when they actually get together they don't even notice it.)
Hi! Ok so I just found WDC and sadly, I can only read the first chapter but it is so good! I've heard so many great things about your story and I'm bummed that I can't read the rest. I really hope you get to publish your new version because I'm sure it's going to be great!
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