Well, I mulled it over and consulted my new online writing group.  Instead of forging ahead and THEN going back and rewriting the scene, I completely thought out the new changes.  Turns out it leads directly to the desired ending very well, better than before, so I probably won’t even really peak at the old pages.

OK, that’s a lie because I’m sure I could use some of it. SIGH.

I’m up to page 199 of 266 in my editing of “Shapeshifters” (woefully mistitled!).  That is a good thing, but also a bad, because here’s the issue: I want this to be a novel but it’s only got 64,500 words.  You need like 100,000 for a novel.  Now it IS true that there is subplot that needs to developed, so that will add. And also that I need to move it from being as explicatory as it is to descriptive, but even so I’m not sure I can get there.  I’ll have to really think it over and decide.

I’ve been longed resolved to this thing having at least a 3rd rewrite/edit, but plotline and character emotions are coming together.

OK, now I’m off to write some backstory on a pivotal character that may in of itself be an interesting side-story.

So, tonight, for the first time since JUNE, I picked up on my fantasy story, and started to edit again. It’s good, really good, and my character makes a comment that at once was sad and poignant - to me:

“I don’t even know WHAT my mother is now,” I said between sobs.  “Is she alive?  Dead?  Superhuman?  I have no idea, but she can never be just my mother ever again.”

I wrote this, I think, inspired by my own mother’s slide into Alzheimer’s.  I wonder if the line will touch readers the way I want, the way I feel.  The mother’s slide from being a queen to being something other worldly does seem (to me) to mimic what I feel about Mom.

Wow.  It’s really a lovely story I’ve written here.  I NEED to finish it, all I needed to do was to get back to it.  I’ll commit now to at least work on it weekly, if not nightly, even for a little bit, and when I’m settled in my new home, I’ll look for a writer’s support group.

Or start one.  Good deal.

A while back, I found this fantastic site, Holly Lisle, who is a fantasy writer (what luck!). It had some great tips and I downloaded and read a portion of “Mugging the Muse”. I stumbled back across it tonight for someone else, and discovered that it’s EXACTLY what I need right now.

So currently my goal is to edit/review 5 pages a night of a currently 246 page draft. It’s more than that, because there is stuff I need to put in the middle.

Anyway, I decided just to go for it, and then came across a bit on one-pass revisioning, and I wonder if I should do that. In the meanwhile, I joined the bulletin boards at the site but they were so overwhelming so I stopped browing and started working and ended up doing 7 pages. Cool.

Now I’m having some issue because I’m wondering if I should still be doing my business. Writing more than one book, running a biz and raising 2 little ones, one with very mild Down’s, is HARD. Not to mention living life, being actively spiritual and charitable, and oh yea, there’s a truly wonderful husband, a mom with Alzheimer’s in need of help, and housework - which just got bigger as we can’t afford a housekeeper as of this year.

Is there a way to get rid of sleep?? LOL…