You ever have one of those so-desperate-you-scrape-the-bottom-of-the-deoderant-stick-and-apply-the-crumbs-with-your-fingers-cuz-you-know-you'll-never-make-it-to-the-store-and-now-your-fingers-are-sweat-resistant-all-over-your-keyboard?
Yeah, I'm having one of those days too.
First off, my revisions are due in two days (48 hours) and I hit a snag this morning. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll use an example that will illustrate what I did.
(Btw, if your name is Kristin, and you're my editor, and you're reading my blog, disregard the above statement. Everything is fine. I'm embellishing the facts for the entertainment purposes of the blog. Nothing to see here. Don't you have something else to do? Hey! What's that over there?! Behind you!)
Okay, so imagine if my editor sent me a revision note saying:
"Hey! I think you should have some more scenes where your character drives a car!"
And so, I add a bunch of scenes toward the beginning of the book where my character drives a car. My editor was right. Brilliant suggestion.
But, then I'm reading through what I think will be the final version, and I reach the halfway point, to chapter 23, in which my character learns how to drive a car for the first time. And she's marvelling in the fact that she's never been able to drive a car before.
And I thought about all those scenes in chapters 6, 8, 12, 15, 22, where I had her driving a car, as if it was a totally normal thing to do. But apparently, she didn't have the ability to drive said car until chapter 23.
Ack!! How stupid am I? (Don't answer that!) How did I forget that my character couldn't drive a car, and there was this pivotal scene where she finally is able to drive?
That's like thinking your character is a boy, and then suddenly, halfway through the book, he looks down at his chest and exclaims, "I love this new bra!"
How could I not remember?
For those writers out there, I know you'll understand it when I say adding a scene is an intricate process. Little details affect other little details, which then fall madly in love with other details, and those details make babies, and suddenly your book is littered with a million newborn bunnies you hadn't planned for.
Now, I have to go back and slay every little single bunny, so to speak.
Okay, thanks for listening. And talking me down. I can do this.
(Again, Kristin, the above is total fiction. It happened... to my... friend. It would suck to be her, wouldn't it?)
