Friday, March 2, 2007

Fin?

Gah!
So one of my readers caught up to me about a week and a half ago and has the last couple of chapters to go (24-28). But I haven't given them to her because I haven't fixed them yet and I'm having a problem with it.
At first I thought I would have a week of fixing while the readers read the given section over a week, but beta reader 2 zipped through the middle to almost-end section faster than I expected, leaving me little time to revise.
The thing is, the climax has been reached, so she's not pestering me for the last couple of chapters; the major things have happened and/or been explained, and if she had had the last couple of chapters, she would have probably gone straight through the last section she read to the end since I think it flows that way and would pull the reader to just go on and finish.
So anyway, I'm having trouble finishing it. The raw material is there from the first draft written in November, and so far, I have improved some of the chapters while some remained pretty much the same, but most of it is virtually unchanged from the first draft; in fact, I have rewritten only one chapter so far, and rearranged another. But this last group seems to require a lot fixing. Or perhaps that's just how I'm seeing it, making a mountain out of a molehill. I just feel there should be more, but the story keeps telling me it's a 60k story; I doubt heavily I can squeeze even another 10k out of it, much less 20-30 k for an average-length first time novel.
So I guess I just have to listen until my subconscious says otherwise, and go ahead and strip the last couple of chapters to their essence, then add on if necessary.

I just realized all I just said doesn't necessarily go together and make for a cohesive blog entry.

Anyway, basically, I'm stuck on this ending part. Come on inspiration! Visit me this weekend!

Oh yeah, beta reader 1 finally got 11-15 yesterday. After that, she has 16-23, then will be in the same place as beta reader 2, but lucky for br1, there will be no wait time like there was for br2. As soon as she's done with a given section, I can hand her the next.

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