Yes, that would be me: the slacker, not the woman in the picture. I don’t know if slacking is the right term though. It’s been a crazy week. I’m consistently short on sleep and that only makes it all worse.
The other night, I made the mistake of making DH read through the first 20 pages of the Flower Queen’s Daughter. I say this was a mistake because he was far too tired. Where I had expected a chuckle or two, there was silence. Doh! He also came up with a lot of questions that I’m now wondering about.
See, I’m trying to be braver and start out the story in the middle of something happening and trying to drizzle in the backstory as garnish instead of the main ingredient like I usually seem to do. I may have been too stingy with what I did put in, because he said it felt a bit disjointed and he kept starting with the “why” word.
I know the answers to these questions, but I don’t want the heroine to know some of them yet. I didn’t really want to jump into another POV just to let the reader know. I don’t know how mystery writers do it. Talk about your juggling acts.
Anyway, so today I finally got back to it and managed to add about a hundred words, but rearranged and changed many more in an attempt to answer those questions or at least make them clearer.
I also did some serious study of the commas I’d used. I hate commas. I think I might have missed that day in elementary school. It’s going to be a hard habit to break when I’ve always just relied on hearing the pauses in my head and plopping one in there.
Off to take the kids to martial arts and see if I can round up 13 things to list for Thursday!
I have problems with commas too, darn things anyway.
The start of a story is always the hardest and some writers rewrite their first page more than a few times. Keep at I’m sure your figure it out.
Janice~