I've been working on turning what I thought was a picture book story into a middle grade novel. It's a story that's been in my head for about 20 years, originally developed as a tell-aloud story with a group of kids I worked with. When I tried writing it as a picture book, it was always too long. Cutting it down lost most of the heart of it. So now, I'm going the other direction. Developing the characters more fully. Adding more characters, more conflicts.
The problem is that lately, I've been a bit stuck on the writing of it. But I keep having these little flashes of insight. (She cheated! There was a curse!) And I'm making notes. Because these flashes are adding up to a better story. And this week I started writing it that way.
In a way, I guess I didn't stop writing it after all. It's just all on these orange and yellow sticky notes instead of in a nice, flowing computer files. So now my job is to take the sticky notes, like patches in a quilt, and seam them all together.
5 comments:
You are right...that is an important part of the writing process. Keep with it....it'll be fantastic :)
It always amazes me how much happens in those in-between times when I just think, think, think about my story. (Not to be confused with those I'd rather do anything but write times.)
Right now, all I'm writing is cover letters and resumes. It helps when I think in terms of query letters...
Or is it "all I'm writing ARE" ?
Help me here, Michelle. My thinker's broken, I fear.
I think it's "All I'm writing are cover letters." Since "letters" refers to more than one thing. But seriously, we aren't doing grammar checks on blog comments. (Is we?)
It was really niggling at me.... And I'm much harder on myself than anyone else. : )
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