A lot has happened in the world since I last wrote a blog but there are two reasons why I’ve been silent for so long. The first was my wife had a total knee replacement and she needed 100% of my time while she recovered. Having had two of these operations myself I know the debilitating state your left in. Both physically and psychologically. You need a lot of support that first couple of months. The second thing was getting the book’s manuscript ready for my editor.
The novel is written in two parts and the ending of Part One just didn’t feel right to me. I felt like there were several things that needed “fixing” so I had to do a whole lot of slash and burn then resurrect the last five chapters with a better understanding about why things had to work out the way they did. The major plot points remained the same it was just the reasons why events unraveled the way they did that needed a lot of work. The devils in the details as they say and I found that I hadn’t understood the why of things as well as I’d thought I had. This required time spent just thinking about these characters, their pasts and hopes and fears for the future. To get to that understanding I think you need to stand in their shoes as much as that is possible. I mean I’m making all this up right, so I can have them do whatever I want or so you’d think but that’s not true. Fictional characters have to follow the same rules we real people do so understanding their psychological state means looking inside yourself, at your own life to find the answers to these problems. After a lot of time knocking around inside my head the answers became clear and that allowed me to bring that insight to the thoughts and actions of my characters. That got Part One finished up.
Then there was still Part Two to get through and I knew my editor was waiting with a certain level of inpatients. Part Two is much shorter and posed few problems for me. I knocked it out and finally got the manuscript out the door. I know there will be a lot more work ahead of me. I want to get this right. As the process moves along I’ll develop a short synopsis of the novel, tag lines and all the stuff you need to get a book sold to a publisher. I’m determined to sell this novel not publish it myself. Right now, we are in this COVID-19 lockdown waiting to see what the world looks like after we come out the other end of this mess. We’re all dealing with the trauma of this situation and I know form experience it takes awhile for all the effects of trauma to become known. Stay safe, wash your hands and try not to touch your face.
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