revisions, ho!

I've been gobbling up information on revisions and re-writes and how to do it and what to look for and what elements best combine to make a can't-put-it-down kind of novel...and...I hope that in a few days (after the year rolls over), I'll be ready to dive in and start tightening up plot lines and plumping up my characters and juicing up the conflicts, etc. etc.

I am reading a recurrent bit of advice- that of (roughly paraphrased in many sources) that you take your Main Character to the playground of noveldom, plunk them onto the monkey bars, tickle their armpits, and then, because it wouldn't be interesting enough just to see them fall, have the monkey bars over a gaping pit full of poisonous snakes and hissing cockroaches. For me, this seems a bit awful. I mean, really. Think of the poor Main Character?? Frankly, I find that life is complicated and menacing as it is, so putting them in realistic situations where they encounter real life terrors and challenges is often quite enough without the throw-in-a-murder-because-you're-bored tactic. I am more in the Alfred Hitchcock camp ("A great story is life, with the dull parts taken out.") but I think that's probably as close as we'd get in our writing styles.

Well. I just wanted to post and let you know, there will be more posts soon :) The new year is full of plot-structure-character-novel-tweaking possibilities and I more than aim to make use of them-- I will be making use of them. I'm planning on being done with revisions by the end of May. Then....here comes the New Year's Resolution part....if I'm still feeling like God is pushing me to let eyeballs other than my own scan and digest the word craft I've been part of--then, I will start sending it out-- to a few carefully chosen readers first, then to the world of publishing...

so. now you know part of my resolution :)

and... I already have an idea brewing for next year's NaNoWriMo.

until next year...