Online much?

Standard

Not really. Pizza Week has been a single-parent experience, and I don’t have a lot of time to hang out online. I’m trying to keep up with my email and LJ friends list, but even that’s a struggle.

Anyway, I spoke with my agent about Project Number Next last Monday. The story idea came from this discussion, and although at first I wasn’t sure I wanted to tackle something like that, eventually the idea started taking over my brain. I had a character I wanted to write about. I had a take on the standard urban fantasy setting that I really, really liked. All through the rewrites of Man Bites World, I was thinking of a handful of confrontations in the new project.

But I fucked it up. I wrote 44 pages with very little dramatic tension–there was no villain, no serious obstacle, just a story question that spins out without resolution. In fact, I did something I pretty much never do: I liked a character so much that I just went along for the ride in her day without a solid narrative. A character died off the page, yeah, and there’s a “Who killed the jerk?” story line, but overall it didn’t work.

Worse, the project as it stands feels very whole and solid to me. It needs to be rethought, but I’m going to need some distance before I have another go at it again. I’m too close right now.

Which means that, as I wait for a second round of notes on Man Bites World (or maybe a check instead!), I’ve gone back to The Buried King, the second-world fantasy I was writing while I was querying for Child of Fire. I abandoned it when Caitlin offered to represent me (and told me to start work on Game of Cages.) I’ve gone back to the goof and discovered I hadn’t really solved the plot yet. So, it needs a little more pre-writing planning, and then I’ll be jumping back into a new book.

And now I’ve spent too much of my writing day on this post, and it’s past time to wake my son. Have a great Friday, everyone.

Forgot to add: my back is almost back to normal today.