Ohhh, now I feel bad/worse for not keeping up with everyone's posts. Maybe you needed more encouragement, and I failed to deliver. Maybe you'll call on me as a beta reader. I do so much better if I can read a whole book or whole chapters in one document via my Kindle. Reading snippet from a dozen different stories in progress each day is just not how my mind operates. If I had a faster wi-fi connection I might be able to toggle from post to post and stay in the story. I'm going to take a look at yours again soon. I don't blame you for feeling constrained and pressured with the word count. I am allergic to that sort of thing. Somehow in November I did finish the 50,000 word story, but looking back, it is nowhere remotely close to publishable, and if I'd taken my time with it instead of rushing to meet a daily word count and finish the story in one month, I might have done better. Now I'm full of self-loathing and no desire to look at that story ever again. But it's not like this for everyone!!! Hang in there!!
There's no need to feel bad/worse, @carolkean, not for my sake. I don't intend to let go of Doris, instead I want her to explore her more by spending some quality time in her company. At the moment, I snatch moments before heading out to work. It's just not enough time for running a marathon. ;) However, it is time enough to play and tinker.
I completely understand that reading snippets of one story then another is difficult. You are jumping into so many worlds and are bound to get a little discombobulated. Still, the fact that you are doing that for so many, is, in my opinion, a reason to feel proud (not bad/worse). Thank you for all that you do.
And, as I have been writing this to you, I've felt the stirrings of the magical muse and know that my way forward with Doris is writing vignettes. The plot can go hang itself (for the time being) on a coat rack and wait until Doris is ready. :)
What a great line!!! The plot can go hang itself (for the time being) on a coat rack and wait until Doris is ready -- yes!! Write the vignettes!! Dare to be different. I was thinking about Doris as I lay awake in the night. And Deirdre. And how the structure of the novel might demand that Doris see Michael with another woman and jump to conclusions, or see Michael at the doctor's office and think he's hiding a cancer diagnosis, and pull Deirdre into some kind of panic supported by a certain secrecy the tight-lipped Michael would maintain. Maybe he's in Big Brothers/Sisters and acts as a surrogate father to some inner city girl. And if all sounded logical to the author, fine, but I've always bristled at the How to Write books and "Put Fire in Your Fiction" (Donald Maas) - an author friend of mine hired Maas as an editor, and he advised her to have the mother in her car see a woman in front of her at the railroad crossing, car stalled, and the mother guns the engine and pushes the first car off the track, narrowly missing a collision with the train herself, and denting her own car. This was so contrived, I advised my friend to not even go there. It seemed to me Maas had not read her novel very closely, or he wouldn't suggest something so jarring. Let the natural, inevitable events unfold, and if readers prefer near-death escapes and smashed cars, pick a genre known for delivering that stuff. Henry James wrote riveting chapters in which the heroine never even left the room. Not all stories have to action-packed and plot driven. The best, imo, are character driven. Go Doris!!
I’m blown away...
Really?