Why Am I Doing This Again?
I think writing up the post about why I want to write romance novels was good for me. I needed a boost and a break from revisions. Yesterday, I spent about 10 hours working on revising the beginning of Gallery of Lies. No, it's not a typo. It says 10. After all that, guess what? The beginning still sucks. I agonized over the first beginning until I finally tossed the whole thing and created version 2.0. I agonized over that one, and now it's about to get tossed as well. This is killing me. I have put SO MUCH time and effort into this story. I knew I was going to have to fix the begining when I wrote the draft, but I never, ever thought it would be this hard to come up with a workable idea for the FIRST FREAKING PAGE. It's not really like writer's block. It's like good writing block. I am able to produce only crappy writing. I thought I would have made tremendous progress on revisions by now, but I'm completely stuck writing and re-writing openings that refuse to get any better. The middle is good (my opinion), and the ending is really good (my opinion), but none of that matters if the beginning is crap because no one will keep reading until they get to the good parts. No agent or editor will ask for a partial or full if the hook isn't there in the begining. I had nightmares about it last night. I told myself I would write version 3.0 today, but I've wasted the whole day and done nothing related to my story. Maybe a little space is a good thing. It's probably going to turn into several days of space because I've got a lot going on with school this week, plus preparations for my cousin's wedding and bridal shower are snowballing. I don't mind that. I'll just have to push the writing to the back burner temporarily. My fear in that is that I will promptly lose my habit of working on it at least a little bit almost every day.
On the up side, I'm caught up on the 2YN assignments (not that they're moving quickly or anything). Did any of you other Yetis who are participating find the theme assignment difficult? I have never picked a theme at the beginning like that before. Honestly, I've never picked a theme before at all... Is that a bad thing? I can see how it will be helpful in character development and my premise is slowly taking shape. I haven't spent much time with the idea (see above paragraph for why.) I think it will be fun though, and hopefully writing the beginning for this one will be a peaceful experience.
On the up side, I'm caught up on the 2YN assignments (not that they're moving quickly or anything). Did any of you other Yetis who are participating find the theme assignment difficult? I have never picked a theme at the beginning like that before. Honestly, I've never picked a theme before at all... Is that a bad thing? I can see how it will be helpful in character development and my premise is slowly taking shape. I haven't spent much time with the idea (see above paragraph for why.) I think it will be fun though, and hopefully writing the beginning for this one will be a peaceful experience.