Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Pushing forward...

I've been working late, all week, and getting home with headaches, so today I focused on nothing but The Alice '65...and it's closer. I'm now at about 60,000 words, with more bits added in that will need to be smoothed over to fit the story. I will have no idea if anything is working until I get to a point where I think I've done enough and decide to print it out and do my red pen thing.

That's when I normally start honing the story. It breaks me out of the screen and I'm almost reading the words as if written by someone else. Then I can edit and rearrange and cut and work with the characters to make it better and tighter and more real.

As of right now, I've just got a lot of action and a bit of truth to the characters. Adam's stumbling along well enough, and Casey's not far behind; it's characters like Vincent and Patricia and Lando who are still not really there, yet. Just involved witnesses to the events when they should be more active participants. Patricia's closest to being developed, since she's Casey's mother and also a lonely woman. I rather enjoy the ending she gets in the book.

The others -- well...Lando still doesn't quite make sense to me. He needs a better through line. And Vincent popped up with something at the end that makes me want to rework his bits at the beginning. Something that also makes him more willing to have The Alice checked to make certain it's authentic. I'm not sure I like it, considering everything else, but I have to let it play itself out.

I'm still approaching this as if it's a romantic-comedy...but by the time I'm done, I have a feeling it will not be what I expected. The drama seems to be pushing its way in, more -- Casey's history and Adam's father's death having an impact on the family, that sort of stuff. So it may wind up merely a romance...I dunno.

Nor do I care, so long as the book is happy.

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