Thursday, July 12, 2007

The Making of a Gentleman

I have just finished the penultimate read-through of my current WIP: The Making of a Gentleman. Pleeeaaaasseee let them keep my title!!!! It's so right for this story.

This has been a grueling month and a half of revisions and self-edits. For some reason, this manuscript was more difficult to write. Was it because it was my tenth (counting all the unpublished ones snuggled among the dust bunnies) manuscript, or was it because I've just written 3 manuscripts back-to-back as deadlines have gotten closer together?

The fact is that I'm so grateful for my critique partner who pinpointed where the trouble spots in the manuscript were and helped me tighten the story, which at times felt like a great unwieldly lump of clay which refused to take the shape I wanted. Our new buzzword: TENSION!

Another challenge in writing it was the fact that at the end of May I was hit by a car while on my bike. I remember nothing about it except waking up on my back in the street, in terrible pain. I suffered a concussion and lots of facial cuts which have now healed. Anyway, suffering headaches for a month did not aid in the creative process.

The Making of a Gentleman is another regency era story set in London. It involves a 'beast' (as in 'Beauty & the Beast') and an ugly duckling, so I'm not sure what to call that combo: Cinderella meets the beast?

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