I’m fine tuning my March release, POSSESSING MORGAN. A fresh set of revisions have just come in, and while I worked on them the other day, I realized that what we were doing was putting the finishing touches on my heroine, Morgan Swann. She’s being buffed and polished into the best Blaze heroine I can create.

I’m not new to writing. I’ve published fairly steadily with a publishing house in NYC and teach writing classes at a couple of nearby university campuses in their continuing ed program.

But writing for Blaze has been eye-opening. This revision means
I’m going deeper into the details. The word-by-word work that takes a good story with decent writing into as shiny a piece as I can make it.

UHHHHH, so is this the point to change motivations? My actual character? Tweaking is one thing…but a change to what makes her tick?

I thought so. At least in the heat of the moment I did. I was rocking my way through the first love scene, responding to some of the revisions when suddenly, I “saw” the light and thought I’d change Morgan’s whole attitude toward the event. Clever me.

But this is my very first Blaze and I’m working with one of the best editors in the business with a reputation for whipping stories into shape. So, off goes an email with a question.

I’m so sure of myself and so high on creativity, my confidence soars and I go back up a few pages and layer in the new ‘tude. I’m happy, I’m laughing as I work, loving the whole thing. ACK, not so fast, Edwards. I get the reply, “I can see this after a few days, but not right off.”

Huh, I nod. Later, yes. I see it now. Clear as day…a heroine needs change, needs to grow and learn. I mean, heck if they knew everything right up front, there wouldn’t be much emotional connection for readers. Who cheers for perfect people? We all like to see the underdog win, right?

Back up to the start of the scene I go…this time, though, I’ve got a combination scene of the original heroine, and my new improved heroine which is too soon. I comb through with a meticulous eye. Deleting, rewriting, adding emotion, removing the wrong emotions, the too-soon thoughts.

Then I go eat lunch. I’m feeling pretty good while I’m eating that cheese sandwich and saying: “Go pee! Good boy!” to my new pup. After he gets some loving for peeing like a big boy does, I check email. (&)

Then I open my word processing program and realize, hm, I didn’t actually close it before I went for lunch. My file opens, but ACK! It’s the original file I opened this morning. Not one change had been saved. :-O

Now, before I’m scolded for not backing up, I’ll say the program’s set for back up every 10 minutes. At worst, that’s all I should have lost. But no! It’s all gone. I let my cursor hover over the file name and yes, there it is…last change was at 8:30 a.m.

I’ve written on computers for 20 years now, 6 of those years I worked in a custom computer shop. So, I know about back ups, I email my work to gmail as back up…I transfer files to my laptop. I do lots of things to protect myself. But still, I lost an entire day’s revisions.

I send Brenda a quick note and conclude that somehow, someway, the universe was telling me to get a good night’s sleep and come at this whole thing again, refreshed, in the morning. The universe was right! Next morning, I went straight back into the original scene and I could see what Brenda meant, as clearly as if the other attitude never occurred to me.

(Odd, but my horoscope that day said puzzle pieces would fall into place…and did you all know Mercury’s retrograde?)

Because of this glitch (the likes of which I’ve NEVER seen before) I came at the scene from Brenda’s perspective and WOW, it works. And yes, Morgan’s new attitude will work well later in the book.

Thing is, I made a huge mistake later that day, by telling my adult daughter about this piece of weirdness. What did I get? Sympathy you say? NOPE, not from this one. I get a lecture about backing up, external hard drives and moving to a Mac. Did I need this? After the day I’d had? Not on your life. What is it about lectures from your children that put your teeth on edge?

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 20th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Blaze Authors, Bonnie Edwards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.