One continues...

Still revising Vol 1 - and on the whole it isn't bad... I've been tweaking a bit, but the narrative is as it is - and now that I'm about 2/3 of the way through, I can see I have turning points in all the right places... I worry that (a) it is too ordinary MOR writing - or (b) that it is too over the top - religion, conscience, unconsumated marriage... not popular subjects.  At supper Ned said "if it's completely different from everything else then it great - it's original...." is that really what "the Market" wants?  Or maybe it's original in the wrong way?

I like it - I just can't see it as others see it.  But then again, a romantic novel from a man's POV - that's a bit different?  Still worrying about too much narrator... I'm not too worried about the final chapters, think they will be broadly all right - since I wrote them slowly - but the last 4,500 words were taken at a bit of a gallop - so I expect to have to do a fair amount of work and expansion on those.

As for submissions, I did one, but am saving the rest until I've finished the re-write.  I would like some movement, but I would rather finish the re-write before anyone asks me for the rest of it.

So the plan is: finish re-write, do submissions, get feedback on TRF and then give it a final prune...and resubmit.  I still haven't worked out the logistics of re-submitting TRF while Vol 1 is still doing the rounds, I think the fantasy is that Vol 1 will be taken in, and I can then push TRF at the putative agent... but we'll see.  After that, I think a solid 3-6 months of research on life at the front, story lines etc. to enable me to write Vol 2.  That pretty much takes care of the year up to the summer hols - barring the unforeseen.

Normal service will be resumed...

It is very painful when things go wrong, I had thought for a while that I had finally developed the confidence and saurian epidermis necessary to pursue my writing career.  However, the Agent's comments when she gracefully declined to take me on were curiously unhelpful.  Yes, yes, I'm a wonderful writer... but she didn't like the plot (the one she suggested) or rather she didn't think I was good at plotting and I had left lots of the teenage stuff in it (that's the stuff everyone likes silly).  She thought I ought to go on a Faber Writing School course (only £400 - a snip!).

This left me in a quandry - I think I'm rather good at plotting actually, and if I'm not, can you say in what way? I would genuinely like to know, so I can improve it, but I can't afford to go on an expensive creative writing course to find out.  On the whole people liked the twists "didn't see that coming" was one remark - Denise kindly lent me her Syd Field workbook - and I found that in terms of a movie scenario TRF didn't need much tweaking - it already had the first adult kiss on the mid-point - almost to the page - and their first sexual experience was just about where the Act II plot point should come.  It is true that there aren't many sub-plots - but there are still interesting little characters and bits, like Benji and Paula and so on. Denise mentioned that at times one needed a break from the main character, and I think that's true - although I'm not sure how I am going to do that, without making it even longer, but it's one of the things on my "to do list".

So, my first response to JM was to send a wailing email to writing chums - and got some helpful feedback.  I also immediately sent it out to an agent - who said "NO" within a few days.  Then it was Christmas.  

This week, I decided I would start submitting the Conscience book instead.  I wrote my first submission yesterday, I intend to do about 5 and then wait.  In November I was so knocked back by JM's response that I thought "what's the point in trying to revise Conscience (which I'd just finished) if I don't know how to plot - I won't be able to correct it or anything.... I won't be able to see what's wrong with the plot etc. etc."

I've just done things to the first 3 chapters - and still I can find sentences where I've lost the thread, or given up half way through.  V.v. irritating.  I don't quite know what to do with the rest of the book.   My feeling is that the story is pretty much there - it's a fairly straightforward narrative, I don't think I need to change much. Probably I just need to tighten up the POVs a  bit, and perhaps provide more insight into Kitty's behaviour... or make it a little more mysterious, give a stronger feeling of the attraction between them...,a bit more detail.  I don't think I know how to do anything else, but they do need to be really strong engaging characters, perhaps Kitty needs to be more sympathetic to the reader somehow.  More conversations between them perhaps?

Anyway, it looks like revising Conscience is going to be the task for the next few weeks.  I know that the last chapter ended at a great rate - maybe we need more incident in there.  It has been hard work getting back to it, but at least I now have a reasonably sensible synopsis ready and plenty of covering letter text..