The “Boring” Stuff
Okay, I just read my last post, and thank goodness I didn’t say anything too embarrassing. ;-)
Today, I had the commute, and instead of letting myself drive comatose, I plotted. It’s interesting the kinds of things a person can come up with in an hour, but I am trying to remember Elmore Leonard’s words, paraphrasing here: I try to leave out the parts people skip.
Leave out the boring parts, in other words. It makes for a much tighter story. :-)
Something I read in Lawrence Block’s Telling Lies for Fun & Profit has stuck with me this last week. “Submit relentlessly” he says. It kinda makes me feel guilty that I only submitted my last book to about 4 people before I set it aside. It was necessary though, because I discovered a major problem with the beginning that I must fix before I send it out again–and yes, I will send it out again!
But there’s the whole wanting to finish my current project before I go back to the previous. Unfortunately, the current project is taking much longer than I’d planned!
I’ve recently made some resolutions and I feel good about them. Change is difficult, much more difficult in real life than in fiction, I believe. But I intend to take this seriously, and we’ll see how I’m doing in a few weeks.
