After the Intro

Well, I'm 9,000 words into revising, now! I'm on page 25, which doesn't seem very far, but I'm happy about where the book is going.

I overhauled the whole beginning.

"Did the agent ask you to do that?" my husband asked.

"No," I told him. But I can't redo the end without changing the intro.

And it's better: stronger, with more layers and conflict, and character development. More wanting. More mystery.

I even changed how the character dresses. And how she talks. She is softer, more fragile, mistrusting.

There's so much to do. I remember Editor Nancy Lamb saying at a conference: "If it doesn't move the plot forward, it goes."

And as I use description, setting, I'm wondering how much of that moves the plot forward.

My book, DRAIN, is a literary paranormal. A WHAT? I know, right? A literary paranormal? The seeing element is minimal, though, to my character's conflict. It interferes with what she wants, and how to get (or keep) it.

I'm a skinny writer. Not at all skinny in the physiological sense, but skinny in that my manuscripts flush out around 52,000 words.

For this voice, I'm sticking with something hollow. It's often sad and empty, like wind through a tunnel.

But today, I go back to school. For two Critical Thinking classes. And there's a stack of manuscripts I need to give feedback on in the next couple of weeks. And there's kids and laundry. But I'll get it done, DRAIN. I totally see the end, and I'm super excited to get there.