Painfully Familiar

After working on the same book for so long, the characters with whom I was once so rapturously in love have now become like painfully familiar relatives I am reluctant to introduce to society.

 Insert gratuitous Hugh Jackman photo here:

Lost in Revision

"It was so much easier in the first draft."

I am really struggling to come out of the fog here. Final revisions are going nowhere. I'm just so stuck!  Things keep changing, which requires more revision, and I'm getting lost in all the additional emotion and plot complications. Don't get me wrong - both of those things were needed (emotion and plot complication) but I am desperate to finish the manuscript by the 26th.

I don't see how I can possibly do it without help.  My husband is helping today by taking our son out for the day so I can be alone, but the house needs cleaning, we need laundry done, we have no groceries, and I MUST go to the post office before it closes.  I have decided to write for 50 minutes, then do chores for 10 minutes, until they come home.

I need another form of help, too.  I need a few objective readers to look at the first several chapters and tell me if
a) it's crap and
b) I should re-restructure the opening.

So if anyone who reads or writes fantasy is willing to do a quick read and get back to me by mid-next-week, please let me know in the comments.  Thanks.

In the meantime, forget the "Tea, Earl Grey, hot."  I need a double cappuchino pronto!  Good thing my favorite coffee shop is right next to the post office.

Editing The Guts Out of the Story

Did you ever look at something you wrote a long time ago and think,  "Wow, that was really passionate and moving and... I killed it."

That happened to me today.  This morning I grabbed my original notebook for my novel, the one with the first handwritten scenes and the precious syllables of my language, to write in if I had some free time today.  I ended up reading one of the pivotal scenes in the heroine's story.  One of those so-called "candy scenes" that are a pleasure to write because they are so compelling, and which drive the rest of the plot.

It made me realize how much I've lost in the editing process through the desire to be "tight" and "clean."  I just edited the same scene last week for the third or fourth time. I wasn't satisfied with it, but I just moved on.  Because that's what I'm doing now: Moving on.  But now I'm thinking, "Hoooold it!  What happened here?"

Did you ever have one of those moments?  Have you gone back and resurrected the dead?