Baggy Clothes

Those who know me well know that in 2010, I lost 70 pounds. As a result, I have a closet full of clothes I couldn't part with but just don't feel right on me anymore. Every once in a while, I will pull them out, put them on and think "This looks okay.". What I really ought to do is bring some of them in at the seams to make them fit better, so I can be proud of them and still enjoy what I loved about them.

NO ONE ELSE is like those clothes I love but they need tailored. I started writing this manuscript many moons ago. I was quickly overwhelmed with my love for the characters and their stories. I finished writing it, queried it to many agents with many kind rejections, and then put it in a closet.

I have since changed. My craft is different. My motive and my plans are different now than they were.

I dusted NO ONE ELSE off and took it out of the closet, put it on to see how it looked and thought "this is OKAY"... but I want it to be great, especially before I send it for copy editing and beta reading. I want it to be that finely tailored shirt that I have loved for many years but has changed to suit my new body.

I was two thirds of the way through doing what I thought was the "FINAL" read through before I sent it to be edited when I realized that my writing was not tight enough. There were many extraneous words. It's true, Tristyn and Luc's story is an immensely emotional one, filled with inner turmoil and angst because, by all rights, they should not be together. When I originally wrote it, the story was contained so deeply in their emotions that that was almost all that I wrote about. The truth is that there is an action filled story arc that goes along with the creations of what I have lately been calling "Tristiano" (you know, Brangelina, Bennifer, Finchel...) and I need to let my characters live that story arc.

So... I have decided to go back through NO ONE ELSE and trim it down, stitch up the seams, tighten my writing. Because I still love everything about it, and also for the sake of itself - and my readers. It started at 91K words (which I initially pared down from about 100K, if I recall correctly - okay - I am VERBOSE.), and I'd like to bring it down to about 80K and make it more palatable. This pushes everything that I want for it back a little bit, but it will be manageable. It's just funny how that road you were heading down suddenly takes a little detour... for tailoring.

Blowing off the dust...

It is scary how long it has been since I have even thought about the dream to have people read the stories that I create. I looked at it a bit last year but there are editing copies of my manuscript of No One Else that haven't been touched since 2008. How did I set things aside for so long?

Life gets busy. So busy, sometimes, that it seems impossible to find time for the escape away from reality that is writing; creating characters that I care about, making them a story, chemistry, and conflict to bind them together. Sometimes I forget about what a blissful escape it is to let myself fall into story building and intense emotion between my characters.

Either way, my dry spell is over! I am back in action with plans for No One Else and more books to come after that. The biggest decision is which stories to write first - which directions to go in first. Lots of new adventures to be had, just have to grab them, tag them down and start to construct them.