Day Three

Yes I know - technically this is Day Four but hey the Big Man upstairs took some time to get his achievements down on paper so I don't think a 24 hour time lag is such a big deal!

Ok.

On the third day Elissa did realise that she had completely messed up the middle and if she wanted her Hero to be a three dimensional character and actually have his conflict all sorted out by the end of the book then she was going to have to do some serious cutting.  So Elissa did call for the good stuff to be separated from the bad stuff.  And Elissa said let the bits happen at the end of the manuscript come forward and let the bits that come after be cut and removed from sight.  And she called the good bits The Right Part and the other bits some words that can't be repeated.  And Elissa saw that it was better.  Not great.  Maybe good.  But definitely better.  And the good bits did yield new ideas for a better ending.

According to the Good Book on the Third Day God separated the land from the seas and gave them names and then called forth the first plants into being.  Me?  I did lots of writing and then whilst doing the washing up last night (primetime for thinking folks) I realised that if I kept going the way I was, this book was going to be WAY too long. So then I started thinking about why it was so long and of course I realised that it was because I was writing 'filler'.  The stuff that pads out that saggy middle.  Rambling.  Nice enough but not good enough.  I needed to change things and the Hero was bothering me - the heroine is torturing him nicely, making him rethink his life and decisions but there's this deeper issue and it just wasn't going to get resolved if I kept going the way I was.  So..........back to the creationist blackboard so to speak.

More detergent, a couple of stubbornly stained pots later and voila!  I needed to bring events forward so he has the last third of the book to address that issue (with the heroine's 'assistance' aka interference of course).