Looking at stuff from a different viewpoint...
It can often reverse a case of writer's block or "muse-less doldrums". So this month I will be totally reviewing and revising my outlook on stuff. Or not. But I will be looking at things differently. I can't continue to languish in a lazy-boy and watch movies.
It's been too darned cold to go out and take a walk, so I do my walking at the mall. I tend to not feel very energetic when the temperatures dip into the teens or lower. I like cool to warm temps...somewhere between 60 and 80...anything outside that range interferes with my desire to do stuff. Even write.
I have dozens of old stories that I have pulled out and looked over. The problem is, while those stories have lain dormant in my files for many years, others have come up with similar tales...and if I don't completely change mine, it will reek of plagiarism. Sigh...
I wrote many books back in the 1980's, before hot and sexy were acceptable to romance publishers. The first book I subbed to my publisher was one I wrote in 1986. Of course, I had to bring the story up to more modern things, but it is one of my biggest selling books...still sells well even after four years. My very biggest selling novella was written in 1989...again, it needed some modernization to make it acceptable to readers in 2010.
Now as I dig out older manuscripts for review with an eye to submission, I realize that I waited too long...because many of my ideas have taken root elsewhere in other fertile, horny minds. LOL! So I must now rewrite everything. Tweak the plots. Rewrite the characters. The whole ball of wax. And that has turned out to be the hardest thing I have tried to accomplish. Once you have written the book, and loved every minute of writing it, it is like pulling out your own teeth to change it completely.
I guess the only thing to do is buckle down and stop moaning about change...because I don't want to let all that hard work and imagination go to waste.
Hope all of you are having a non-frozen, enjoyable January.
Hugs...
Fran Lee
5 comments:
Fran, I've tried to rewrite books and it never works for me. I find it easier to take the same characters and put them in a different setting than try to rework something. I enjoyed your post.
Fran, I'm doing that right now, and it is so tough. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one going through this journey.
I've considered rewriting some of my older books but for me, remodeling is always harder than building a new structure. I find that some of the ideas do end up in newer books, though:) If the mall weren't so far away, I'd be walking there, too! Exercising to a DVD just isn't the same:)
Can't bring myself to do that..something in me just rebels. I love some of my first book that went nowhere, but I can only write new stuff. Not to say an old idea or two doesn't sneak in.
Sigh. Most of my best ideas were written years back. But as I rewrite, I drag new stuff in, and spruce up the book. Counting the dozens of old books and the dozens of wips, I often have trouble choosing which to work on.
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