Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Satisfied Feeling



I know you've been there. You know you have a good idea for a story but there's some indefinable something that you're hung up on. Been scratching my head over my wip, RC ever since taking Delilah Devlin and Elle Jame's Blotting Bootcamp in March. Bad timing. I was about 15k in the story, trying to figure out what to pitch for the Nola Stars conference.

After taking the class I realized I didn't understand the characters well enough to move forward. Since I've been bogged down in crawfish season anyway, I've used my infrequent snatches of time to look at characters, plot ideas, writing new beginnings, a few new scenes, gradually getting closer to what I wanted.

All along, I've thought, if I could just figure out the twist that would make this more than just a contemporary romance mystery. I had an agent and a publisher request it after I pitched it on the spur of the moment, but I knew I needed an extra spark.

Last week I decided to place the story in Louisiana, after all, I know the area and I'd been looking for another region that had alligators and swamps. Then...Sunday morning I dreamed about RCM. A scene popped into my head that has changed the entire complexion of the book. It will be a paranormal. Now, I'm excited about it. Looking forward to moving forward.

My goal had been to do that yesterday but now I have to revamp my Scrivener file to allow for new research, consolidate old files, and do the research on some of the changes. I finished the mechanics in Scrivener of pulling the files together, now I have to read through it all again and figure out what is going to work and what to trash. Tomorrow, it's on to Big Town to use the high speed internet and do my research. Hopefully, by end of week or Monday next, I'll be back on track. Yes!

2 comments:

Dani said...

Congrats! I'm so glad you got it worked out. That is always such a great feeling. Exciting. Can't wait to see you dig into it.

Leah Braemel said...

I think setting it Louisiana, somewhere you know will make it easier on you. Plus I think it has more mystery to play with for us who don't live around there.