The first few days after the Surrey International Writers Conference I didn't do too much work. I wanted to absorb what I'd heard, what I'd learned, and then apply it to my two works in progress.
Once I started writing again, I began with “Reservations of the Heart.” I'd had some thoughts about it while letting it lay fallow over the summer, and so I worked those in, while keeping in mind the new awareness SIWC gave me. As luck would have it, I connected with another Canadian writer through the Romance Writers of America, so I sent off my most recent draft to her, and am waiting for her comments. There will come a time when I just have to say “Enough!” but I don't think I've reached that point quite yet. While she's critiquing RofH, I'm back to the Azores manuscript, which is now titled “No Day But This.” In my Blue Pencil session at SIWC, Jane Porter recommended I rethink where the story starts. I had spent quite a bit of time getting my main character to the island - and therefore, the hero. Most of those scenes were laying the groundwork for my character's personality and motivation, but now I can see how they slow everything down, are too heavy with back story and need to be dumped in favour of action. I can always work the info in later, and there can be nothing bad about getting my H and H together more quickly. Doing this, however, has resulted in the loss of about 10,000 words (sob!) and will involve a fairly intensive re-write of pretty much every scene. That's the bad part. The good part is I can really see how it will make my story stronger. The yin and yang of revising. The SIWC hangover is over. Time to buckle down and get to business!
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