Keep On Rocking in The Free World

Guinevere tells me I have a new reader of the packet of chapters I sent her sometime back, and that's excellent. Even though that draft was in desperate need of some revision, the basic structure of the narrative is sound. If I recall, she told me the packet was Chapters 1 through 4, which is an interesting chunk. I probably should have done 1 through 5, since Chapter 5 is where Emma comes back into the storyline, but by the end of Chapter 4 we've met most of the major players in one form or another. I've promised to send the revised chapters in a new packet as soon as they're ready, and I'll probably do 1-4 again, just so I can get them out sooner rather than later. Now I haven't heard yet whether this new reader enjoyed the chapters or thinks they're crap, but really I'm just happy that somebody is reading them. If this book is ever successful it'll probably be largely due to word of mouth spread by Guinevere, my #1 fan. She rocks.

It'll probably be packets for Guinevere, Colleen, mom and dad, and me. Not all of those packets are expected to be read, and I'm fine with that. I know Colleen is extremely busy all the time, for instance. And really, I don't know if she likes the story or not. I do know, from a source, that my mom once couldn't get all the way through Chapter 1, and I'll admit that it's hard-going to get through that chapter, especially since it's my mom and she knows Kelly is really me. It's fine. It's cool. But the packets are going anyway. Another reason for those is to have everything backed up in physical paper form in case the laptop goes kerblooey and the disks get erased. Technology scares me a little bit in that way. Too much can go wrong. If I were still in touch with Krysten she'd get a packet, too, but I'm not so that's out the window.

Meanwhile, I'm still in Chapter 3. The part of the chapter that I mentioned last time as needing a big fix turns out to be just fine the way it is. That's encouraging. I've gotten a little further than that, too. Kelly and Alyssa have just left the party, and she's about to drive them somewhere quiet. And that's the next thing I need to fix. As written, the driving sequence is way way way too long, and I need to find a way to trim that into a tighter package. I'm just not sure how to go about it. I've never been happy with that sequence. It's always dragged. That's my assignment for tomorrow.

When I get back to the conversation between the two of them, though, that's the easy part. It's a lot of text, but it's pretty close to perfect just the way it is. I'm only going to tweak it a little bit. And then it's on to Chapter 4, which needs a complete overhaul. The scene breakdowns are right. Most of what everyone says is good the way it is. But I screwed up a few things really badly, like changing the job environment away from the hospital setting. That was a terrible mistake, and I'm going to rectify that.

On a side note, one of my favorite devices in the book are Alyssa's cigarettes. Now Melissa has never been a smoker; Alyssa smokes quite a bit. I don't remember exactly why I added that character trait, aside from that I think smoking is sexy, and that I thought it would fit the character, but whatever prompted me to do it I'm glad I did. They've been a blessing. Those cigarettes have been so useful to me in so many different scenes that I'd be lost without them.

Besides, everybody knows smoking is totally cool.