Back to Work Today--The Voices are Back ;-)

Opened my back door this morning to let the dogs out and was greeted by temperatures that I could actually stand :-) That was a nice change from those too-cold temps of the last few days. So, I walked with the neighbor but did not run, because my nose was still doing plenty of running for me ;-)

But I am well enough to be back at work on the book, at double-speed. I wrote over the weekend, about ten pages a day, but didn't do a lot of editing, just scene writing. I'm on the end of the book, my favorite part, because I'm just fitting in those last few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. I feel like that guy in the A-Team (I forget his name; the one with the cigar) who stands there and says, "I love it when a plan comes together."

I write a book by the seat of my pants, never really knowing how it's going to turn out. It drives my critique partner crazy because she always wants to know the whys and wherefores ahead of time and I just say I have no idea, but I'll figure it out sometime. The characters will tell me when they're good and ready. Now, that's not to say I don't have moments of sheer panic when those characters aren't talking and I have no freakin' idea what's going to happen and there's a lot of pages left to write and I don't know why anyone is acting the way they are and I'm muddling it around in my head and getting nothing more than more muddle...

Those are the bad days. :-)

Today, however, is a good day. All the characters have come clean. Sure, a few have said some things that necessitate going back and changing a couple of things, but thankfully nothing big. Not like the surprise in The Daddy's Promise, which even surprised me when Luke sprung that on Anita. (And no, I won't tell you here, because not everyone has read that book and I won't spoil it for anyone).

Or the surprise dropped on Daniel in The Bachelor Preferred Pastry. Olivia kept tugging in one direction that I resisted, then finally gave in and let her have her way and drop that one bombshell at the pastry cook-off. That was loads of fun :-).

Those are actually really cool times for me, when characters do things like that. Sure, I have to go back and rewrite other parts, drop in clues here and there, but wow, is it fun to have the book shift directions for me. I think I always know it's going to do it, somewhere in the back of my mind, and I'll resist it (I hate revising, and dream of the day when I can write one draft and be done with it :-) but then when it happens, I get all excited about the new stuff. So, maybe I'm just a big old whiny book writing baby ;-)

Off to whine some more and write this new, fun direction into this book, which will come out next December, tentatively, and is tentatively called Miss Invisible.

Have a great day!

Shirley