Tell me about yourself

It's amazing how sometimes a fictional character can take on a life of its own. For instance I have been busily editing my first novel and I have come to a point in the story where I seem to have shifted into a wrong gear. No matter where I begin this particular chapter or put on the page it sounds wrong. And I refuse to let myself get bothered by it so I tried another approach.

The iPhone is a handy little tool. Truly. I especially love the notepad app because there is no bells and whistles it is exactly what it says. It's a notepad. Now while I was waiting to be picked up outside Von's I began to have a conversation with one of my characters. I asked her what she had been up to. It was through this series of questioning that I discovered that my recount of her portion in my tale was completely wrong. She was in fact in some place entirely different at the time of the chapter I'm having difficulty recounting. So with a few tweaks in the previous chapters I am absolutely certain it will smooth out my ride and ill shift into the proper gear.

So now I am jazzed to start fresh tomorrow with the knowledge I have gathered. This line of questioning has also inspired me to do the same to my other characters but instead of trying to figure out "what happened" during the gap of time she was gone I instead will have them tell me about themselves.

I know this isn't that original of an idea. I was told to do this exercise in my acting classes and in various "how to" novel writing books. This will be the first time I've ever actually utilized this tool. Now I wish that I had in the past. It was because of this line of questioning that the character became more vivid in my thoughts. Granted she is based off of a real life person but in the context of the story and the events that transpire in it she has become her own self.

P.S.
I found this website to be amazingly helpful. It has a VERY thorough character questionnaire. I found myself pretending to be a journalist as I asked the questions.

Many Mini Revelations

So I've done it. I purchased the URL of my pen name and thus have begun a whole other journey. Sure, I'm putting the cart before the horse in some aspect but I wanted to have some blogs written by the time I start to query. The main idea being that if I have some examples of my writing online then they would be available if someone should google my name. I doubt it but you never know. The whole process has been interesting. I asked my partner/boyfriend/thing if it was odd that I made my own website and he thought I was rather ridiculous for doing it. I'm weird he told me. Which is true. I am a bit strange but there is a method to the madness. After many failed plans I have finally concluded that this must be my moment. I want to start out 2013 with a bang and focus on my writing. I have set a date of the 26th to be completed with my round of edits. Unlike in the past the process hasn't gotten me down. In an odd turn of events it's made me realize how capable I am of doing that which is expected of me. And even in some instances have walked away from my spout of editing feeling invigorated. Let's hope that continues this weekend.This weekend I intend to finish the main plot line of my novel. It has two that run parallel through the entire thing and tie everything up in a nice little bow. While reworking scenes and adding in/taking out characters I've developed a more coherent subplot that plays well into the main story. So, I figured it would be fair to dedicate time to each individual story instead of hopping back and forth as I have been. At two points in novel my characters had the same exact scene just hours later and in a different locations. The crux of my problem due to the fact that I had spent one week revising one chapter (to perfection, I may add) and the following on the following chapter which in fact has no real tie to the previous. (Who's on first?) The past couple weeks I have had this phrase recycling in my thoughts: You make sacrifices now to reap the benefits later. It's basically a reworded, reap what you sew or anything reaping adjacent. I never really understood that until recently. I guess some part of myself thought that the computer would just magically make the necessary revisions. Obviously that isn't going to happen so I'm rather glad that my brain has caught onto that fact. But i have to confess it is difficult when it feels like your inner critic and your partner/friend/thing seem to be best buds and grew up together. His words tend to feed this second sense of self and it keeps me down and wanting to hide away from my work.