Welcome to IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to
share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of
appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer
assistance and guidance. It’s a haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG
is the brainchild of our ninja leader Alex Cavanaugh. Thank
you to this month’s co-hosts, Rebecca Douglass, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Cathrina Constantine, and Jacqui Murray.
Optional question - Is there anything you'd like to see
changed, added, and/or rearranged about the book publishing industry?
I’m passing on this month’s question, other than to say I
wish we could go back thirty or forty years…
Onto another topic. This is my second summer of retirement
and I’m still tickled by the idea of waking up with no real agenda, other than what
I come up with on the fly. Although that’s not really true. I do have a schedule
of sorts, working in the gardens, yoga classes and from June to August, swimming
laps from seven to eight am, during the only adult lap swim offered at our town
pool on weekdays.
Lap swimming can be pretty darn boring without waterproof earphones, but this summer I’m using the time to think about my writing, which helps things go quickly. Specifically, I’m reacting to comments from a friend/author/editor who read my current novel recently. The good news? She said, “Really. It’s good. It’s publishable as is…” but then of course she offered suggestions to enhance it, and they got me thinking, which after all, is what I’d hired her to do. After pondering her comments, my overriding thought was, sure. Maybe it’s good enough as is, but if there’s a way to make it better, shouldn’t I do it? Heck, yeah.
Her suggestions were as follows: Option #1, make one of the two
POV’s in the book a secondary character and tell the entire story through the
remaining POV’s eyes. Option #2, keep the second POV but give the character
more of an arc, without increasing the word count.
I pondered for a while before nixing the first option. I’ve
murdered many darlings in my day, but in this case it would remove
the reader’s closeness to my second POV. I’d have to find a way to tell
everything that happened to her, without having the readers live it through her
eyes. I guess I like her too much to relegate her to secondary status, so Option
#2 it is.
Amping up my second POV character while not increasing the word count means there are plenty of other darlings to kill, and lately my morning swims have involved major what-if-ing. Sometimes I lose track of the swimming. When I finish up, my Apple watch tells me I’ve swum more laps than normal.
Cutting words while burning calories? I’ll
take that as a win!
