If At First...Or Second...Or Third...You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again

So I'm bogged down in the midst of what used to be the 365 Story Project and is now Middle Ridge Road B. That means, of course, that there was a Middle Ridge Road A. I had a moment of excitment last week when I started outlining candy bar scenes, though that didn't do me a lot of good because I forgot to go back to the scenes when I went back to work a couple of days later. And, then, though I sort of had the ending, it was only sort of.

So this week what I'm going to do is start another draft, this time in the first person. Now, I've gone on record here many times as believing the first-person has been done to death in children's literature. But the first-person is good for two things: 1. It's a quick and dirty way to create a voice, though it may end up being a voice everyone has heard before, and 2. When characters speak for themselves, they tend to spit up more material than they do when an author is writing about them.

So that's what I'm hoping to do, create more material, as in motivation, etc. I'm also planning to do some first-person work for a secondary character who is significant, hoping to heave up some important material about him and perhaps create a voice for him, too.

In the best of all possible scenarios, this will work, I'll finish a draft and then write another one in the third person.

I'm kind of psyched about this, even though it means extending this job by, I don't know, a couple of lifetimes. But at least I know what I'll be doing. Unfortunately, I have a long, long weekend of family stuff coming up, so I won't be doing it much.

But the weekend will be more enjoyable knowing--or at least, believing--I have a plan.