MayNoWriMo: Days 11, 12

I ended up squeezing another session in last night for another 811 words.

Today Dark & Early: 839

Tonight: 1418

Sadly, I’ve deviated a bit from my monstrously large and detailed outline.  I think I’m still fine — it’s more motiviational changes that have happened or been explained better than my plot.  However, I did decide to eliminate the villain’s POV.  I just wasn’t able to pull it off without losing some of the suspense in the main story line.  The perfect “mystery” would unfold if Nevarre’s POV wasn’t included, but I like having his take on scenes, and he has much to add.  This isn’t a “mystery” anyway, but there’s some nice doubt brewing in Lily’s mind–and so in the reader’s mind–that I completely lost with the villain blabbering about all the horrible things he wanted to do.  For such a major structural change, I wasn’t comfortable leaving the earlier section in the villain’s (incorrect) POV, so I went back last night and revised it out.  The new words last night were continuing the earlier scene in Violet’s POV — instead of switching as I’d planned.  It hink it works much better.

I also skimmed Donald Maass’s The Fire in Fiction over lunch today and got a ton of ideas for things to do to the Maya story.  He really makes me think.  Combined with the plot weaknesses that Angelle identified, I think I’m coming up with a plan to knock this story out of the park.  I hope.  I pray.  I’m so sick of Revision Xibalba!!!  But the story deserves the best I can do, and there’s no sense in rushing a bunch of queries out into the world and ruining my A-list shots when I know the story has some problems that I can resolve first.

*cue Michael Jackson’s Thriller – inside joke*

So somehow, I need to fit some revisions in over the next week or so as well as MayNoWriMo.  If I can juggle two massive stories at the same time…  While two books are coming up for releases this and next month.  *dies*

 

Snippet:  A few paragraphs explaining why the North Tower is charred and how Lilias came to be a widow.  (And NO, she’s not the dreaded virgin widow of Romancelandia!)

Reaching up, Violet cupped her sister’s wan cheeks in her palms and turned her face down to hers.  “If someone is doing evil–black magic as Edmund had been doing without our knowledge–then I hope it does happen again.  If someone is hurting one of our loved ones, then I hope you stop them, whatever it takes.  Edmund deserved to die.”

“And I brought him here.”  Lilias pulled free, gently, but she did take Violet’s hand in hers.  “Papa tried to warn me that Edmund was not for me.  I brought a monster to our family home and turned a blind eye until Papa paid the price of my mistake.  I couldn’t save him.”

“It’s not your fault that Edmund was doing black magic,” Violet retorted, squeezing her sister’s hand so hard that she winced.  “It’s not your fault that Papa discovered him in the middle of a terrible spell and Edmund killed him.  I’m just grateful that you were there to punish him.”

“I was so angry,” Lilias whispered, her voice hoarse.  “I lost control.  I wanted to blast him to hell for what he’d done.  What if he’d hurt you, too?  What if I’d tried to open the school, and he’d killed one of our girls?  But what’s worse…”

She made a choked sound, the slim column of her throat working.  “I thought I loved him.”