So, in addition to the uni stuff, I am working on my 1st attempt at a publishable novel. first draft written, and now on the rewrite. BUT I am doing under the shadow of a couple of close folk who think it is a waste of time, without reading it, so I suffer from guilt that I am not doing a "proper job" from time to time. BUT getting this to a publishable state is something that I think I have a chance at, and so am not trying to let them get to be.
So, Am I just playing and wasting my time? You decide. First draft done for Nanowrimo, and encouraged by the feedback from a couple of neutral readers, as well as some others, I have been fired on to see this thing through. Have spent the last couple of months re reading and re ressearching, and now embarking on a edit and draft to process. Being ruthless, trying to cut scenes that have no place, writing new ones to cover missed development - telling events rather than listening to chrarcters talk about them, provide more meat. Also, trying to be a bit more historical, and less "make up" where things I wrote lacking the ressearch I have since found the info , and in most cases, it is more exiting than what I made up. BUT each change, however minor, sends ripples through the whole story, and leads me to change things through the whole book, and trying to do that without spoiling the pace and exitement is tough. It is still a pleasure to do, but now becomming serious and hard work.
One example
Jane Gray sat in the large room of the Manor house that her late husband built. “Arthur Gray’s Folly” It was known far and wide, built on the profits of the smuggling that had eventually led to her husbands hanging earlier that year. The Illegal trade in tea, rum and wool had both made his fortune, and led to his downfall. Now she was a widow, living on the money that Arthur had squirreled away, but that was dwindling. Her husband had constructed special cellars underneath the house, connected by tunnels so as to hide the contraband, and, up till last year, these were always full. Now, since Goudhurst, these were empty, and no money was coming in from the trade. She was seriously thinking about selling the place, using the money to get somewhere where she could live, well away from the Manor, and the men who still held control of her, and this place. After Gray was arrested, and hung, their promise to “see her right” had led to her feeling that she was in thrall to them, that they were the masters she was expected to serve. Nothing was more evident than the way that three of them had swept in here tonight, and were now sitting opposite her, as if they owned the place. She looked up at Kingsmill, sitting there with his big boots still on, he may have inherited the role of leader after her husband was arrested, but he was so different to her husband. Gray was all about the money, and in order to safeguard their income, he had turned the gang into the most fearsome in the whole of the south east. Kingsmill, the man who had taken over, was different. He had inherited a gang on the wane, and was even more ruthless than her husband, but with him, it was being in charge that he enjoyed, rather than working for the money. Maybe that was a product of the situation they faced themselves, she didn’t know. All she knew was that the empty cellars meant no money for her, and the fault of this she put firmly at Kingsmill’s door.
I like this scene. It is good, and does move the plot on, BUT it can't be where it is, something later on in the scene is nonsense, I I need to focus on another character that I virtually ignored in the early part of draft one, so I need to reloctaed this, but where? and what effect will this have?
DOES THIS MEAN I AM WASTING MY TIME AND BEING LAZY. OR AM I WORKING?
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