ok, so i'm a writer: major revisions

in honor of a susan g. komen event we are holding at our restaurant tonight, this whole post will be pink. just throwing that out there.

over this past week, i did a big thing. a big, big thing. well, first, i spent the week in florida, writing and trying to relax while i worked on a new novel. and for the first couple days, that worked out. i had my five-subject, college ruled office depot spiral notebook with me pretty much everywhere i went. it was 80 degrees most of the time, so i had to get creative with how i wrote (nothing more annoying than sweaty spf on a page of hard work...).  but i did it, and i loved it. this new story is totallllly different than my other ones, so i welcomed the change of scenery and change of writing style.

fast forward to midweek. it was still a work-week for me (remember "vacations" aren't vacations for a writer. that's when we work the best!), so i was on the phone with sarah (my rockstar agent). we had been discussing the possibility of trying the story out in first person ever since another amazing agent got involved in our latest pitching process. emmanuelle you are my jam. it was previously written in a very loose third person, with a lot of the character spilling out, a lot of asides. in other words, i wasn't very neutral in my third person pov. but, being the expert she is, emmanuelle kept saying we might want to try the voice in the first person, that my character might connect more. 

for those of you who don't know what that would exactly entail from me, literally ever single "she", "her" "their"....every time I referred to anything really, all of that had to be changed to "I" "my" "mine". And of course a lot of the "and then this happened", matter of fact sentences had to be changed to be less "tell"...more show. always. 

i had 390 pages .  

i could have said no, i guess, but it didn't even occur to me not to try it. when someone that experienced gives you a tip that huge, never mind how much work--why are you doing this if you don't want to actually work?--you do it. you try it. worst case scenario, it doesn't make the book any better and you  revert back to the manuscript you had. best case? well, it's freakin' better! 

pre-sick, first person transformation workstation 

so, we started out with just a chapter, trying it out. i changed it, sent it in, and by friday, i was on the phone with sarah and her amazing assistant (who just got a killer position at random house....go michelle!) it was a go. i was going to keep changing the whole thing. 

i probably should have a little freaked out or overwhelmed or something. that would have been normal i think. but i was so excited! a chance to make "my baby" better? heck yes! i'm still an amateur at this. i love writing as much as a seasoned veteran but i know i don't know what i'm doing...technically. so to be able to have this freedom to change my entire work around...it was kind of awesome. 

how long did it take? well, as you can imagine, it took a few days. i planned on working through it in a weekend...and i was on track until i got sick and threw up all night (yuck), so of course when that happened, i was pushed back a few more days to recover. who wants to be staring at a screen whiel they are nauseous? not me! but i ached to be able to  anyway. so, let me do the math: i started early saturday morning...then i had to stop until monday morning when i was on my flight back to tennessee. and i finished last night. so probably collectively 3 days? not that bad. they were intense, mind you, but YOU'RE WRITING! how bad can it ever get????

 so, i sent the first draft of the first person pov revision last night, and i am waiting to get started on the second one now, but i thought i'd post while i had a moment--since i hadn't since the fifth of this month. holy cow! 

i can't wait to keep going. this is fun. i think i might print it out. 

have a good thursday!

awkward 

naples

marco island

ashlyne