It’s been a while since I posted anything, so I’m sure you are all wondering what I’ve been up to. There was an epic road trip from Austin to Florida with my sister and her 3 young kids (5, 3, 1) that ended in a surprise visit to my grandma. There was a wedding shower in New Hampshire that resulted in a rather embarrassing, but extremely creative, gift from my mom. There was a trip to a Jewish mikvah to complete my conversion. There was a visit to the vet just to learn that my cat really is eating himself sick ($70 well spent). And then there was a TON of editing.
I always thought writing was the time-consuming part of being a writer, until I decided that one of my characters had to go. He was getting in the way of plot elements and relationships and, when I looked closely at the manuscript, I could see that the only reason he was there in the first place was because I didn’t want to have to work out some tricky elements. But putting a bandage over a leak never fixes the leak. You have to actually discover the source of the problem and repair it. So over the past 4-6 weeks, I have been exorcising this character from the plot. And you know what? Even though it takes a lot of work to remove a character, my other characters are growing more interesting and the plot is flowing better now that I’ve made these changes. Of course, removing this character has forced me to rewrite entire chapters since his removal has altered the plot in significant ways.
While this process has set me back some, it has been well worth it because I feel like I have gotten a stronger WIP out of it. So the take away from this – don’t be afraid of change, even if it is BIG change. If you feel like something isn’t working, chances are, it actually isn’t working.
