Back to the Drawing Board
After reading (and re-reading and re-reading) Lauren’s assessment of My Last Days and reluctantly agreeing with most of what she said, it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
At first, it felt like she was cutting down my work, which made me a little upset. I think that’s understandable though, no one wants to be told they didn’t do a good job at something they worked so hard on for so long. But the more I read her feedback, I realized she was right. I think that annoyed me more than anything else with this process. How could I, all the times I read the book, not see the things she saw? I suppose, on some level, that’s good. If I wrote something perfect on the first try every try, I’d be doing better at this than I am, right?
While the story will mostly stay the same, as well the characters, a lot of the actions and routines that happen in the book will change. A lot of the annoyances with the main character – his traits, his attitude, his progression, will change.
My plan is to – once I’ve had some time to wrap my head around what to do – go back and re-outline the entire story with what I know and what I want to accomplish. Lauren’s feedback was really helpful in seeing the holes that needed to be filled.
While I’m a little bummed (okay, super bummed) that I won’t meet the completely arbitrary goal I set for myself on this, I’m excited to get back to work and put something out that will be more thorough, more enjoyed, and hopefully a better overall product.
So, while I was hoping that a blog post this time of year would be “Go get your copy!”, it’s not. It’s back to the drawing board, literally.