Skip to main content

Writer & Story: A Tale of Lovers...

I'm totally excited at this point in my editing of my novel. I'm nearing the last 20 pages and as the story comes full circle - and I must say well edited by several friends and myself - I can see why I've always believed in this story centering on Vada Faith Waddell's quest to be "somebody" more than who she is when the story opens.

I'm excited as I begin to think of marketing this novel - again.

I was burned out a year or two ago when I worked to come up with a new marketing plan. My feet were dragging and I was no longer interested in the project. That's called STORY BURNOUT. It happens to all of us, especially those of us who have labored to birth a particularly difficult story over the period of several years. What started out as a glorious projects brings one into the depths of despair as they realize the story may never be read by anyone other than oneself and his/her friends.

The story wasn't difficult in the creativity phase. That was the biggest high I'd ever been on. It seemed to me it was the best story I'd ever read. Women's fiction anyway.

The relationship between myself and this story has gone through many phases. We were lovers in the beginning in the best of ways - we could not get enough of each other. Then the togetherness started to get on my nerves - what the characters had done in the beginning to excite me now depressed me. What was I thinking, writing such a story? Too many people going in too many directions. It involved much thinking, sweating, rearranging, rewriting, copying and pasting. Moving everything around was much like moving a house full of furniture cross country on a rickety pick up truck.
Pieces fell out, pieces got jostled, some pieces simply got crushed during the ride.

My relationship with HUNGRY FOR CHOCOLATE has come full circle and I'm in love again and ready to market the heck out of this story. With all that I have and all that I am I will see this story through to publication, one way or another.

That's dedication and my story of the changing relationship between this writer and her story.

How's your project coming along? What phase are you in on this hot July day?

Blessings on whatever and wherever you are with your writing and life!

Comments

  1. Glad you're excited again! I'm excited about my current project AND marking my first book, too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love how you described your relationship with your book. I am starting to love mine again after about two weeks of tearing it all apart! I hope to get it ready to be professionally edited by Mid august--that's my goal!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Glad you're "in love" again. I've always loved Vada Faith's story. Sometimes a little distance helps. I know when I came back to Pairs on Ice after a long break, I thought, Wow, this is a fun story and I really love Jamie and Matt. After getting your feedback, I hope to start marketing it in the fall.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm so happy we are all working. Feels good. Who turned up the heat here in OHIO???

    ReplyDelete
  5. It is good to hear the excitement. I admire your abilities very much.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I also fall in and out of love with a manuscript. Sometimes I'm too sluggish to write or I focus on other wip. But when the feelings swing towards love again, I have the energy to revise and edit.

    Have a great weekend.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm so glad to hear you've arrived at this place with your story and look forward to the day when I can fall in love with it, too. I'm in Iowa right now at the writing festival hoping to find the inspiration this week to move forward with my next book.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Glad you are in love again. Good luck with Hungry for Chocolate!I haven't been doing much, except sending in my columns each month for Two Lane Livin' I sort of suffered a burn out, I worked so hard and so long on getting my story ready before the conference, that I've kinda taken a break. I sent it to Sourcebooks, but haven't heard back anything yet.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

APOLOGIES....

For those of you who regularly follow my blog, I wanted you to know that health issues and family problems have kept me from my computer lately. Of course my mind has been busy coming up with great ideas to blog about but by the time I sit down late at night to write those lovely ideas have flown out of my head and gone back to wherever good ideas come from in the first place. I miss posting. I miss thinking. I miss resting. I miss just standing and staring, as cows in the fields are known to do. I miss all of you too. Reading about your lives and reading your comments on mine. However, I'm the eternal optimist and I see a teeny speck of light at the end of the tunnel. In two weeks life here should be back to normal, whatever that is. Have any of you figured out what normal is, exactly. I get up everyday and try to live the best life I know how. Is that normal? Or is normal different for each of us. What about a new normal? Are we doomed to live our "normal life" fo

Shingles: not the roofing kind...

Just when I thought things could not get any worse at our house my husband R came down with shingles. On the day I had to be at the hospital in Columbus with one adult daughter in the morning and then go to Cincinnati to pick up her husband after his stomach surgery the day before, R gets up with a rash that had turned to blisters. We made a quick dash 40 miles away to our family Dr. for a check up and yes my diagnosis was correct. Shingles! So armed with two medications we headed to the medical center to see our daughter, then to Cincinnati to pick up her husband and then home to collapse and hope that that's the end of our downward spiral. I'm worn to a frazzle and so is R. No time for writing or fretting about writing. I do feel good knowing that I have some contest entries out (short stories and one novel) and will be working on my novel at least two days this coming week. I have my writers meeting on Monday at Great Expectations Cafe and Book Store and look for

Mother's Leather Britches...

My mother gardened all her life. It was one of her great loves, next to family, God, and country. Because she grew up during the Depression, she learned to use every last item from her garden for canning, preserving, drying or pickling. Every year at the end of the green bean season she made leather britches, dried beans that would keep for the winter. These were the last beans hanging on the vines. The beans inside had grown to full size with outsides a bit withered. They were beyond the stage to can or preserve, or even to pickle. Although her fried pickled green beans and corn bread were the best in the world. (Well, next to her biscuits and fried apples.) Mother started the drying process with clean beans. She would spread a clean white sheet on a table in the wash room and spread the beans out on that, giving them space to dry. Sometime she would carry the sheet outside and put them on a table in the sun to further the process. The next step involved needle and thread