With my “finished” novel now working its way through the United States and (soon) the Far North, the question arises naturally about what I will do with my now copious amounts of free time.

That was a joke.  It’s okay to laugh.

The question arose while shopping with my kids yesterday and Natasha nearly exploded with delight when she suggested, “King’s Quest VI!”

I bought this from our library for $1, some months back, and all my family has been through it but me.  It enabled a significant amount of my work to get done while Jay helped the kids with it, and I feel no need anymore to do it myself.

“Or I could start my second novel,” I responded with equal enthusiasm.  “No,” she said.  “That wouldn’t be as interesting.”

But I did anyway, last night after seeing part of Stranger than Fiction and the pilot of Castle with Jay.

I *love* pilots.  I think the best storytelling happens there.

And this novel is going to be an entirely different experience.

~ ~ ~

If there is one thing about my first novel I’m not sure how to “fix,” it’s that the story seems more event-driven than character-driven.

Being based based on an established story can do that– one has a sort of check-list to get through.

This next story, Perfection Wasted, gets to be the opposite.  This story takes the premise “Every person is the main character in his/her own story,” and looks at a different story that is happening at the same time as part of Linnea’s Journey.

Yes, I know that’s a bland title, but just now, it’s the closest to applicable I’ve come up with.

This one has gets to be character-driven because, other than the events of the first novel it bumps into by proximity, there is no checklist for this story.  Only characters.

So far here’s my set of new main characters:

• A princess raised to be a pawn, secretly afraid she’s too smart for her own safety
• A prince raised to be king, hiding that he’s a coward
• The prince’s best friend and body guard, with divided loyalties
• Two evil women– one powerful in magic, the other in influence– and I have yet to see which one will prove worse.

They all exist in Linnea’s Journey, but I carefully avoided giving them POV, and I’m going to seat-of-the pants this one until I can decide if I really want to deal with a war (because that would be the ultimate question: can these people avert/fight/or win a war).

I don’t feel secure discussing politics, even in a novel, so I’ll have to get over that or find a different climax.

I am slightly ashamed to say that Linnea’s Journey does feel a bit like a novel lying in wait for a sequel, but it really was too big to get everything in there at once.

And I really like having a familiar cast to return to and play with.

Till I turn 30.

No that’s not the point of this post. (But now you know, doncha.)

I’m nearly done with my final sweep. It’s come the same week as Jay’s been working longer hours, but God has been providing an encouraging ballance, so even with Jay gone more I haven’t been particularly slowed down.

(Though I did read a book yesterday, and that was refreshing.)

Still haven’t figured out what to do with Garm (Linnea’s sheep dog) for the end.  Jay said he should die somewhere while he’s out on the quest with Kennett, which really would solve all our problems… But mostly I’m resisting because I don’t want to waste emotional capital when there’s so many more significant things going on.

And I told Jay last night that I’m getting cold feet about sending my story out to be read by half a dozen near-strangers.  His loving supportive response:

Get over it.

Which, of course, was the right thing to say.  The main trouble is releasing it knowing readers will find flaws. Which will prove I’ve missed some.

I don’t think I pretend to be perfect, but with writing and rewriting I’ve sort of grown to feel that illusions of (near) perfection in a final product are appropriate.   And I realize I’m not going to be there, and that’s going to be disappointing to me.

And I need to get over it.

More than looking good myself, I want the story to look good, so that means handing it to people who will tell me what needs to be fixed.  What I’ve missed.

Though I will admit that my deepest fear is that somebody, very honest and apologetic, will tell me to be thankful only 6 people saw it because most of the story needs to be scrapped.

Next big project (I expect this revision to be done by the end of the week):

One-page summary.

I am in so much trouble.

You know how, in a “small town” everyone is related, and even those who aren’t related know the connections and hierarchy of everyone else?  Kids coming in halfway through 7th grade are going to be behind until they graduate from High School.

~

This is the feeling I’m trying to avoid in my novel.

It’s a small kingdom.  Okay, a small world.  It makes sense, but it only makes sense because the reader doesn’t get everything at once.  Like you would in a summary.

I’ve got my one-liner and used it about a dozen times now: Crippled girl disenchants beast but her happily-ever-after is interrupted when her new husband must leave on a quest and she finds herself facing new monsters, alone.

It’s worked 9-times out of 10.  Number 10 was this morning and my audience was distracted every-other-word, so the long sentence was too convoluted to follow.

But she asked for a longer summary, and I realized I am in *majo* trouble.

It must have taken me half an hour to work through it all (I really should have timed it), even leaving out half of one subplot and all of the other.  After doing detail work for weeks, I’m having to step back and ignore subtly and word craft and simply SAY:

This happens because of this to a person you care about because of this. The circumstances combine with this villain and these choices resulting in this.

The editor who agreed to look at my work when it was finished emphasized that this last this is especially important. TELL ME HOW IT ENDS, she insisted.  This is the person you want to amaze and charm and that doesn’t happen if you try to be coy.

To be honest, I don’t know how to be coy (*shocker* I know).  If I didn’t include the ending–before I know I needed to– it would be to save space.  To give more space to the rest of the story.

So I’ve been trying to think how to keep things short when this afternoon’s already proven that’s going to be a real challenge.

In the long version I think it’s cool that one storyline tangles with another, but for this version I wish they were a bit more self-contained.

I know I’ll get there, but griping just feels good every now and then.  I’ll pat myself on the back that no one has to see it very often, and I hope this will be all I say about it here.

Cheers.

(Done with 301 pages out of 357.  Over 7,000 words in this revision’s cut-bits file.)

At a book sale today

(I swear I’m done buying for a while!  I’m not even going to go into a bookstore through May– maybe through July too!)

I ran into a friend of mine who is an elementary school librarian.  She and her husband (a high school football coach with military experience) both agreed to read my novel, and a 4-6th-grade teacher agreed too.  I’m excited about these people reading it because they are all readers of 6-8th grade fantasy, and (I expect) will be able to give me a more experienced eye toward what age my story is appropriate for.

And I expect the man will have something to say about my fight scenes and references to military stuff, which I’ll welcome.

But, yeah, I bought a lot of books today.  And it parially makes me feel foolish buying books when I haven’t finished everything I own… but I’m beginning to feel it’s a bit like buying food before your kitchen is empty.  There are days when you know *just* what you want to eat, and there are days when you just want… options.

So there you go.  I’ve got options now (not that I didn’t before…) and I’ve reached my spending limit for this month and part of next’s, so that’s where the moratorium on buying came from.

For the first time in nearly 9 years of marriage Jay has suggested I limit my book-buying (to an entirely reasonable amount!).

I just have to retrain the way I think about hunting buying books, and I’ll be fine with it. ;)

This moment I’m absolutely torn.  All these delicious new books are calling me, and the opportunity to get my book read is calling too.

So many opportunities, all of them good.  I am blessed.

And a little bit over.  On page 182/355.

Just finished cleaning scene 20.