Discovery

This was a three day week…including today.  Yesterday was a nightmare because of questions about Too Darn Hot from the assistant of my old editor.  I’m not going into it here because of the trouble it caused the last time when I got too detailed.  However, I’ll say this: it’s never over until it’s over.  When the book is between hardcovers then all you need fear are the reviewers.

Today I’m going to the movies as I so often do on Fridays.  This is a practice I had to give up writing the second part of TDH last year so I could make a deadline.  I have no deadline now (except in my head) so I’ll continue my Friday afternoon movie going unless there isn’t anything to see.

The three days I did work were terrific.  I was forced to rewrite chapter one because chapter four changed everthing.  I didn’t mind at all.  I don’t rewrite as I go along I just keep pushing ahead.  I used to have a sign on my bulletin board that said, “Advance the Story.”  And that’s what I try to do in the first draft.  But I had to rewrite chapter one so that I could write chapter five and have it make sense to me.

Chapter four has changed the whole tenor of the novel.  It’s even changed the title.  It’s now a type of sub-genre crime novel I’ve always wanted to write.  I hope I can pull it off.  I’m heading in the right direction but I’m still in Act One and that’s the easiest part. 

I find myself thinking about these characters all the time.  This is much more involving for me than the Faye Quick books.  That doesn’t mean I didn’t like those books or didn’t care, but this is a different type of project.  Writing Faye wasn’t a new sub-genre for me.  I’d done six P. I. novels before I began TDFH.  So even though I didn’t know who the murderer was when I started I still knew the form very well.

This book is new territory for me.  And it’s not a whodunnit.  I don’t know anything.  The book is telling me everything, leading the way.  The titles I pick from the box are also leading the way.  It’s amazing how well that is working.  This is turning out to be very exciting.  Don’t think that means it isn’t work.  It is.  But, so far, I’m look forward to getting on with it.

I also need to do some research.  I enjoy that.  The novel is set in present day, so the research is different from what I did with the Faye Quick books.  This has more to do with a character’s line of work.  It’s something I know nothing about.  I’ll be reading about it over the weekend. 

Monday, unless some horror greets me, I’ll write again.