Waiting

When you’re letting that WIP age a little—just enough to give you fresh eyes and ideas when you get back to it—what do you do? Work on another manuscript? One so old it’s covered with dust bunnies? But it has all these really neat characters and all it needs are a few tweaks. Then you, or an astute critique partner, realize the first chapter is deadly dull. So you start over, incorporating scenes, partial scenes, a single line from previous versions and you end up—revising the whole thing based on a few fatal flaws.

Or do you bring up a brand new page on your computer, intending to work on those characters who wake you up in the middle of the night and demand you tell their stories? This new gang has the audacity to distract you from the WIP you’ve ripped apart to the point it’s unrecognizable.

Do you read in hope of distracting yourself? Or only for the pure pleasure of losing yourself in the magic of another author’s worlds? For example, in Paris Brandon’s hot shape-shifter jaguars of Assassin’s Kiss or Cindy Spencer Pape’s whimsical and sexy Djinni and the Geek? Or Shanna Abe’s The Time Weaver with its glorious drakons and lyrical narrative?

And how do you avoid feeling envy and wish you could write so beautifully? Truth is…you don’t.

You go back to the WIP, determined to make it better. You hold the memory of those perfect turns of phrase and words and find your own words—in your own unique voice—to apply to that new story begging to be told.

And you keep on writing.

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!

Dee