Saturday, October 16, 2010

So I Did Work This Weekend

Just yesterday I talked about trying to work on the weekends. Well, this morning, while working in a family member's yard, the brain was snapping away on The Fletcher Farm Body (or should I call it The Fletchers of Grand Mount?). I came up with a couple of ways for my main character to learn important information. I also realized that I need to dump another chapter.

Just about a month ago, I wrote here about having revised the first three chapters of the present project for the sixth time. Well, soon after that I realized that the third chapter had to go. It had to be replaced entirely. Why? Because I took my character away from his task so he could visit a place I like and I could write cool, amusing stuff about it. But I wasn't staying on task with my writing subject.

So, that wasn't too bad, but then last week I finally accepted something that I had been trying to avoid. A character needed to go. She was a very, very cool adult character. But her function was going to end up being providing information for the main character. No, no, no. It's about the kids, stupid. The task of a children's book is to be about kids. So I worked this week on getting rid of her.

This morning while I was doing yard work I also came up with some ideas for beefing up a teen character, who has not yet appeared in this draft, to take over some of the function of the adult character I eliminated last week.

The chapter I decided to eliminate this morning is going off to join other abandoned work because it doesn't get my main character any closer to accomplishing his task.

It's all about the task. Goals. Objectives. Stay...on...task.

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