STRONG FOUNDATIONS....

So I'm working on an edit of a WIP. I have given this work to a cold reader, so I have her notes as I go back and work through. Looking at the big picture stuff as well as all those tiny niggly details. Some details are not tiny, as I've changed two characters names already...OMG the mistakes that causes!

I have begun to research how writers go through this structural edit.


I have looked at the Hero's journey...and all the many variations. I have noted where my novel meets these milestones...the 'call to adventure'.....the 'threshold guardians'.

And I have...

Gone off to play in the garden and dream of what will be.

This appears to be one of the many problems I face. Getting down to it. I'm so easily distracted.

I know I should be doing work. Research. Getting my head around...



But frankly I would much rather...


Be on a beach. Somewhere. Anywhere.

I put down some more notes, work on a chapter. Realise that since I've moved chapters around, a description of a character needs to take place earlier.

Hello distraction. I pat the cat, put on a load of washing. Watch the rain fall. Move a pot plant. Or seven. Realise something needs to be done with my horde of pot plants. 

Then I get back to it. 

This three act structure is new to me, learnt about it at a workshop a few months ago. So I read a bit more about it. Take a few notes. Ready for more research and then somehow realise an hour later, that I'm now on Pinterest gaining ideas for a new garden bed.

Forcing myself back, I set my phone's alarm to sound in twenty minutes. I focus. I work. I get up and begin to bake.

Yep....hello distractions....

But I find, even when I am baking/ washing / cleaning/ dreaming...the novel stays with me. I think of a moment that needs tightening. A character that needs a bit more oomph and how I can subtly do that. 

It will be slow a work in progress for quite a while. But it is progressing.


Even with a thousand distractions.

Vicki 




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