Is it really my tenth edition of Work in Progress Wednesday? Well, setting aside the small chance that I might have miscounted somewhere along the line, I'm just gonna go ahead and say, "Yes. Yes, it is."And appropriately enough for this momentous occasion I've also reached a long-awaited milestone in my own WIP. Finally, after weeks of talking about it, I have finished my level 1 rewrites!
I finished on Tuesday afternoon after several marathon sessions over the past five days. There was a point on Friday, when I thought I would never get through the whole thing. This is when I discovered a chapter that had to be rewritten almost completely due to it's unbelievable suckage.
It started with me just breezing past a potentially important moment between two characters. Instead of letting my characters live that moment on the page, I kind of did a, "So, we're on the way here, after we said this and this, but that's over and now we're onto the next thing."
Basically, I was a little too interested in moving the plot forward, and didn't give my characters a chance to say what they needed to say. So, I stuck them in the room together and let them talk things out. I think it went well.
That was the first half of the chapter.
The second half was even worse.
In that half I totally contradicted revelations that would be revealed at the end of the novel. This actually wasn't my fault, as I didn't know about these revelations until I was writing the end of the stupid thing, but it still sucked to realize, "Oh, yeah, that doesn't make sense anymore. Crap."
Anyway, it took me some stewage time to think over those problems, and then some more time to do the actual fixing of them.
Luckily, none of the following chapters needed quite as extensive "gut it all" redo's and I was able at long long long long last, to reach the end.
It felt good.
Like Hiro on Heroes screaming, "YA TA!" kind of good (Although that show, and more specifically that character are completely unwatchable now. My husband still watches it, and sometimes I'll wander in and catch just enough to be like, "Looks like it still sucks." And he is basically like, "Yeah.").
It didn't just feel good because I finished though, but also because shockingly, I kind of liked my little story. Lately, I've been doing quite a bit of, "How do I suck? Let me count the ways?" type thinking, and so it was nice to have that (no doubt short-lived) moment where I thought, "Hey, this is kind of good."
I am going to cling to this moment with everything I've got because next on my list is sending my WIP out to Beta readers. Gulp.
So, how is everyone else's works in progress moving along? Hit any major milestones this week?
And if you want to participate in WIP Wednesday, simply post your own WIP Wednesday entry on your blog and leave a link to it in the comments below. Or if you don't have a blog, feel free to report your progress directly into the comments box.
For more detailed information concerning what all this nonsense is about please consult the original Work in Progress Wednesday posting.
Feel free to also make use of the lovely little WIP Wednesday logo as well!
