Lennon's Line Lingers

OK, maybe not the best title, but I couldn't resist the alliteration.

I had Monday off for the holiday. I spent part of it on the eternal round of chores and reviews, then decided it was time to work on my stuff. I brought my printout of Lennon's Line and my laptop with me when I had the oil changed on my car. As I waited, I finally started to re-read my story.

It's always a little weird reading something you've written yourself. I'm my own worst critic, of course, and I did find commas out of place, minor continunity errors, and some phrasings to fix. But to my surprise, it didn't suck. ;) I say that because when I revise one of my stories, I generally start by throwing everything out and writing it over again. I do that because I get ideas for better scenes, though I'm sure my perfectionistic qualities have something to do with it too. I have to admit I did rewrite a lot of this story even before I posted it to the workshop; in some cases, I even rewrote what I'd posted and submitted it again. But I enjoyed reading this story so much that after the oil change, when I stopped by Barnes and Noble to hang out there, I didn't even open up my laptop; I just sat there, drank my tea, and continued to read. By reading some more after dinner, I managed to make my way through the whole thing. The funny thing about this draft is that as I read it, I didn't come up with my own ideas for the next draft. Instead, I remembered comments reviewers have made.

Probably the next big thing I have to do with this novel is review all of the reviews I received on it. That will take a while, as I think the printout of reviews is as big as the 400-page novel itself! One thing I started in the meantime is to go ahead and play with the opening chapter. Most of you reading this probably haven't read my story. I don't want to give too much away, but the first part of the story is in the first-person viewpoint of Joanna Lennon. (I originally wrote this part as a stand-alone story, but then I decided Paul's son needed his own story too. Little did I know what I was letting myself in for....) The second half is mostly in Paul's POV, but it's in third person. Basically, I start off with an "I" story and switch to a "he" one halfway through. A few people commented on that, so I'm going to try converting Jo's section to third person to see what it's like. I've had better luck with first-person stories than with third-person ones; my theory is that the first person POV makes me pay more attention to style. I'm also going to create a third alternate opening in which I've changed names and details to disguise the fact that it's a Lennon story. It should be interesting to see which version gets the most votes.

I'm making more progress with Day of All Seasons now, even if it means throwing out what I have and rewriting a new scene, which is what I'm doing now. At least I should have a new chapter up by the end of the month. My reviewers may be a bit surprised to see me post so much in a relatively short amount of time. ;) I also finished the second chapter of Key (I can't remember if I said this before), but I still have to review it before I can upload it to my website.