Saturday, April 15, 2017

Day 46 - Changing Everything

This morning I got a message from my boyfriend showing me a mobile home out in Boulder City, NV. Last night I was editing and came to a few realizations that blew the story wide open. What do those two things have in common? They are things that if I were to commit to, everything would change. Sometimes change is good, other times it can be terrifying. The question is whether or not you have the courage to jump in feet first when the opportunity arises.

For the house move I would be moving away from my friends that live not only within the city of Las Vegas but also in my very neighborhood. My immediate reaction is that of a child not wanting to leave his friends and find a new school. Then comes the more logistical opposition. One of the vehicles I drive is a large, gas-guzzling truck and on the best of days with traffic the commute would be close to an hour. Filling the vehicle would cost close to four hundred a month at least. I love going downtown to Fremont to relax, heading to coffee shops nearby to write with fellow authors and have classes at the gym five miles away with instructors I adore. All of that would be gone if we moved so far away because of cost and inconvenience. It would however be a significant savings financially on the house and car so we could afford other things more easily. I have since proposed looking into something similar but closer.

As for the editing, things are coming to a point where I have to make a serious decision. Breathe has been written, edited, rewritten (3 times) and edited again. Now I am rewriting again because after six years of it staring at me I still do not like it. I love some of the characters but there have been aspects that just shouted at me that something wasn't right. Collusion among characters that never meshed well, personality switches that happened abruptly and random characters that did nothing but confuse the plot. I have loved my bad girl with a heart of gold though I always wished she held onto the bad girl part a little more. Yesterday as I was reading through I had that moment with her that writers love. That moment when you can almost reach out and feel the connection. You learn something, or many things, about a character and those things can open your eyes in a whole new way.

There were things I had written way back in the first draft that as I go through them now I can see how much more there is to the story. Kelsey Matthews is much deeper than I thought. There are elements of what she wanted and her desperation that predate the book so there is background that needs to be sprinkled in. I figured out why one situation wasn't working and how to fix it though there is a scene that will have to be completely redone in order to mend that particular story fence. But for the first time in years I am excited to work on the book with her again. I am thrilled to see where she is taking me and to get to the end so my betas can finally get there hands on it. The only problem is that giving in to this new realization would mean abandoning all of the work I have already done because almost everything is going to change.

I am not sure what to do about moving, I love my house. I am not sure I am ready to commit to such a drastic storyline change but clearly what I have isn't working. No matter what I do moving forward things will need to change. It is just a matter of finding a compromise that will work for everyone.

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