The Middle-ground Solution

You know how I wasn't sure what to do next with my WIP? I figured out a plan of action. Before I dive in and do yet another edit, I have one person reading through to make suggestions on which sections could stand some beefing up or fat-trimming.

Meanwhile, for the last few days, I've been itching to just get in and start skimming it myself. But today I came to a solution that will work. I think.

It would be a waste for me to go through and start looking for places to fix, when someone else is doing that for me. After I get back their notes, I can tackle everything. In the meantime, what's a writer to do? I'm floundering.

Solution: Review a different book. I have five novels in various draft stages in my computer. I don't want to get sucked too deeply into a side project, though, so I'm going to take the one at the simplest stage and fix some background work.

One of the five novels is not even a complete first draft yet. I started it to try my hand at "letting the book write itself". And that turned into quite a struggle as things didn't always fit together, and I didn't even start with a fully formed plot.

I opened the file yesterday - it's at 13,000 words so far - and saw that I started character pages, but didn't list anything more than a name! I'll start there, I think, flesh out some details of the people I've written so far, then maybe give the story a re-read and potentially fill in more plot points. I think with this incomplete novel, I'll find it easy to set aside when my WIP is ready for more work.

Anyway, it's a plan to keep my creative juices going while I await feedback. 

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