Hmm

There were a few posts and comments over at WriteOnCon that changed the way I look at revising, so I'm going to share.

On Picture Books:

I don't blog about writing picture books often because, although I do write them, I've received what I thought were so many rejections that I haven't had the confidence to submit a PB manuscript in years. I write a first draft, decide it's a mess, and ignore it. This isn't something I'm proud of.

At WriteOnCon, I kept reading and hearing how important it is to write character driven picture books, and then I participated in "Shake Your PB Till It Shines," by Cory Rosen Schwartz and Tiffany Strelitzlaber. Corey polished a stanza I submitted for their "Makeover," and we both loved the result. In fact, she blogged about it (if you'd like to see the makeover). So, all I have to do is write a compelling story with just the right character in words that sing. Then I have to polish the confection until it shines. That's all. ;o)

Nothing has changed but my attitude.

On Novels:

I struggle with beginnings. Every time I pull up a document to write, I see the beginning and start to overanalyze it. I tinker with mine, completely scrap and write new ones, and they still never feel quite right. You want your first impression to be perfect. 

For the conference, I posted my first five pages of THE BINDER'S WEB. I'm still working on my second draft, partly because I can't leave the beginning alone, so attracting an agent's attention wasn't even something I'd considered. I just wanted feedback. The first person to give me feedback was an agent. 

"Myrna, you've sort of fallen into a common trap of epic fantasy: a huge cast of characters. There are too many people introduced in this short space, and while I was able to separate them for a while, there were just too many to be reasonable, IMO, by the end of five pages.

And your first few paragraphs are really great and intriguing, and I was hoping that something crazy terrible would happen -- you'd introduce that inciting incident -- but you didn't. I think you spend too much time on the day-to-day here, and while it's necessary for the world-building, the pacing is slow and I had to force myself not to skim. You want to filter all of this in as you go and make every single scene as proactively tense as possible, as forward-moving as possible."

This made me rethink my beginning in a major way. While I have a main character, there are two other characters that are almost as important to the story as she is. In chapter six, they all come together for the first time*, and they are the only characters in that scene. A lot of important things happen before that point, but the more I think about starting at this particular point, the better I feel about it. It's going to be a major revision. I may have to change the way I tell the story from third to first person, though I hope not. But I am so excited about how this could improve my whole story.

Robyn (my daughter) and I "attended" the conference together, this year. She even posted her first five pages for critique. I love that girl.

Have a great weekend!


*I have to give my husband credit here for telling me to start it "where the MC has a sword at her throat." Otherwise, I'd still be floundering.