Wednesday, February 18, 2009

They're Mocking Me


My editor suggested we add a tiny little scene in the YA so that readers could get a better sense of the two main character's relationship (as an aside, I sooooo enjoy writing the romance parts of the book I just might write a whole book like that sometime soon). The instructions were intentionally vague, I think because editors (and agents for that matter) don't want to mess with your creativity. In my first run-through of this revision I mainly went over all the editor's notes and incorporated everything from little theme issues to word replacements. As I was doing that, I found the perfect spot for the new scene to go, so I inserted some space, and put the cursor at the beginning.

I knew I wanted the scene to be at school, so I plonked them down at school and waited for something to happen. Unfortunately, nothing did. I swear, I sat there for three days waiting for them to do something, but all they did was stand around and laugh at me, talking quietly amongst themselves. It was very annoying. Finally, last night, as I was sitting there waiting, they decided to go out to the lockers and start the scene and I dutifully wrote it down. I think it actually came out okay, but I'm still a little pissed at them for working me over. In quiet moments I can hear them laughing at me.

On this date: In 1931, Toni Morrison was born.

2 comments:

Robin Mellom said...

You crack me up. Can you hear ME laughing at you?
Kidding. I love hearing about your process.

:-)

CJ Omololu said...

Is nobody else ruled by their character's whims? Nobody?