Baby Steps
23/05/09 10:20 Filed in: Writing
This is a very slow process. I am trying very hard to
give myself the time I apparently need to recover
from my mother's death last month and get back to my
writing. Step one occurred last week, when I started
to read through and perform some minor editing on my
Phillip Gold novel, The Silent Goodbye.
Step two is upon me. I have just taken several hours to read through the many Abigail Massey stories posted on this website and perform the same sort of polishing work on them. I fixed up some typos, dealt with a couple of consistency issues and changed the ages of the four major characters from 18 to 16, to bring them more in line with their attitudes and behaviour. I think the stories work better this way.
Once again, however, I find that I truly and honestly enjoy my own writing. And that's not a good thing. First, I get so caught up in the story I am not actually able to spot the errors and stop to fix them. Second, I don't have the kind of objective eye I need to see what is not working on a more macro level and make the stories better. I find myself simply reading for enjoyment.
I like these stories. I like the characters and find them both well-crafted and, by the end of 12 stories, fairly well established. Abigail and Martha have a nice relationship and I quite like Jenny and, to a lesser extent, Alice, who is the least developed of the four. Miss Pierce has emerged very nicely as a person of several levels and I think I've succeeded in portraying her as a stern manager who, because she is dealing with stuff in own life, cannot often show "her girls" how she really feels about them.
Both Mr. Fitzpatrick and Gilles LeClerc are also, I think, reasonably charming and nicely developed. I am even quite happy with how the budding romance between Gilles and Martha is coming along.
Like I said, I'm not the most objective reader.
I'm not sure if I'll write any more of these stories, at least not soon, but I do think I should start making a plan to market them. I'd like to believe they're good enough for public consumption beyond this webpage! Maybe as a collection of stories or even as the basis for one of those sweet Canadian period dramas for the CBC!
Step two is upon me. I have just taken several hours to read through the many Abigail Massey stories posted on this website and perform the same sort of polishing work on them. I fixed up some typos, dealt with a couple of consistency issues and changed the ages of the four major characters from 18 to 16, to bring them more in line with their attitudes and behaviour. I think the stories work better this way.
Once again, however, I find that I truly and honestly enjoy my own writing. And that's not a good thing. First, I get so caught up in the story I am not actually able to spot the errors and stop to fix them. Second, I don't have the kind of objective eye I need to see what is not working on a more macro level and make the stories better. I find myself simply reading for enjoyment.
I like these stories. I like the characters and find them both well-crafted and, by the end of 12 stories, fairly well established. Abigail and Martha have a nice relationship and I quite like Jenny and, to a lesser extent, Alice, who is the least developed of the four. Miss Pierce has emerged very nicely as a person of several levels and I think I've succeeded in portraying her as a stern manager who, because she is dealing with stuff in own life, cannot often show "her girls" how she really feels about them.
Both Mr. Fitzpatrick and Gilles LeClerc are also, I think, reasonably charming and nicely developed. I am even quite happy with how the budding romance between Gilles and Martha is coming along.
Like I said, I'm not the most objective reader.
I'm not sure if I'll write any more of these stories, at least not soon, but I do think I should start making a plan to market them. I'd like to believe they're good enough for public consumption beyond this webpage! Maybe as a collection of stories or even as the basis for one of those sweet Canadian period dramas for the CBC!