Well, what do you think the editor and novelist had to recommend? Exactly what you readers told me: I'd been hung up on 2 things: 1) that it seemed like a phenomenal amount of work to rework the 85% of the novel already written and 2) I wasn't sure the pacing of the stories would mesh well together. (Oh, I guess 3 things: I was just more comfortable in the point of view of Maizy and Curt when they are older, looking back.) I left the mid-winter retreat encouraged because novelist Susan Gregg Gilmore really gave me a lot of encouragement, expressly because she talked about just having written a novel in the manner in which I write. She even had to start over, renegotiate a deadline with her publisher to do that phenomenal amount of work. But she did it. It is possible.
Last Saturday, I went to the Lancaster Christan Writer's one-day conference. I met with novelists there too who read my opening and my plan for the structure. Again and again, it was affirmed that the two-track idea for the 2 couples is the way to go. With Jeannette Windle, political suspense novelist, I admitted that in working on fleshing out the story of the older couple, I just felt daunted sometimes because I realized how much I didn't know about their story. Writing periodic flashbacks let me touch down on their story only every few years, even skipping a decade or more. But writing their relationship from a to z, in chronological order to have it parallel the other couples'--wow, is it hard! It's changing the story--eek! My characters are informing me that things I thought they did in their 30s or 40s or 50s are no longer logical or likely--because their 20-something or 30-something actions and situations in life change them in ways that change who they will in the future I imagined for them.
But multiple times, I was encouraged in this hard task, a task that may derail me from my goal to have a complete draft by the end of July. I was also told that my writing is very good and that my opening was gripping. My story gave them mystery. So for all that, I shall take heart and keep plugging away.
An it's not entirely unpleasant. I'm enjoying discovering exactly how Maizy and Curt were in their marriage through the years. It just really frustrated the goal-oriented side of me that still wants the goal to be "be done soon." I have to reprogram my goal to be "do what's best for the story. Just write it, and go ahead and overwrite it even, so you can find the best story."
Other things I write:
Postpartum Depression, Psychological Distress Predicted by Previous Traumatic Birth
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