Rewriting – At Last! A Theme?
Last month, on May 5 to be exact, I began the process of rewriting Perfect Opportunities and submitting it to a couple of crit groups for objective opinions. My goal was to submit one chapter per week until the novel was complete.
I began the process knowing there would be things to change, tighten, improve, or remove. Those things come with the territory.
My crit partners have been invaluable. They have pointed out things like inaccurate punctuation, implausible circumstances, and other details that I had long ago stopped seeing because I knew what should be there.
And I submitted the prologue and six chapters, fine tuning each one before sending it and collecting the responses.
Then June 15 happened. My husband had double cataract surgery that day and both of our schedules have been in turmoil ever since. The procedure went great, by the way, but I’m the family chauffeur until he’s able to retest for his driver’s license. Reduced amounts of time and increased weariness when I have time to write have curtailed all of my writing.
That event was followed by another more subtle, but no less meaningful event on June 22. My usual morning reading of the Bible and a devotional book opened my eyes to something I’ve been searching for since June 2008: The underlying story theme.
I recorded my thoughts on the subject that day and have been pondering them since. The good news is that I think I finally know what this story is all about.
The bad news? The story doesn’t convey that message in its current form.
Consequently, there will be more rewriting involved than first anticipated and it appears I may be going back to the beginning to add background scenes and set up the story more accurately so it ends up where it needs to be.
For the time being, that means current rewrites and submissions are on hold. I spent the last part of June pondering implications and looking at possibilities and it looks like I’ll spend at least some of July doing the same thing.
But there is hope. A lot of it. I have the strong sense that identifying and defining the overall concept and all its manifestations will produce a better overall story in the long run.
And that’s always good news!
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