Photo by timsnell
I’m exhausted, and I’ve done no writing today. Lots of thinking.
I worked in the shed all day today. Doing work I hadn’t planned on, caulking all the gaps between every single board, between the walls and the floor and the walls and the roof, down the corners where the wall panels meet, and that 10mm (3/8″) gap under the windows the wind howled through. It took three tubes of gap filler! Worth it, I think, even though time-consuming. It should make a big difference to how weatherproof the shed is. I didn’t take any photos as there are only so many photos of an empty shed anyone will want to see. Just imagine three huge tubes worth of white lines across the last photo!
I’ll be back at the Day Job tomorrow, but Thursday I can start putting up the foam insulation panels.
And hopefully start work on the rewrite of the Christmas story.
I’ve been thinking about it all day. I’m glad I left it a few more days to start. I need that extra distance. before I change anything.
Though I’ve made a big decision. I’m going for an idea I had early on in the development phase of the story, and was strongly tempted by but ultimately rejected as less suited for the particular Call for Submissions I wrote the story for. I’m making the hero and heroine much older. Late fifties or even early sixties instead of twenties.
It works far better for me that way. I just like it. I think it will add more poignancy, too.
It will mean more of a total rewrite. It also means it won’t really be a category type romance any more. It will be a feel-good Christmas story that also happens to be a love story with a happy ever after. So I’ve pondered the differences between single title and category romance.
How to know- this idea is category, this idea is single title? What’s the dividing line between category-style romance, an ST romance, and an ST with strong romantic elements? How does the writer’s mindset need to change when approaching the story?
I’m guessing it’s the tropes, the focus on the relationship, the need for secondary characters, just how big a canvas the story needs to be told the way the calls for. Discussion with my CPs suggest that ST can get away with more humour, less of a black moment. Many of the romantic ST’s I’ve read have been fairly light and fluffy, a kind of grey moment and not the real black BM needed for category. More feel-goodish. But there still needs to be some sort of ”all is lost” moment, or there’s no story. The sh*t hits the fan moment (the nursing meaning of BM!).
So, I’ll be writing the story as a single title, with older protagonist. It will be unsaleable, of course, but at least it will be unsaleable as the story I wanted to write, not the story I thought I ought to write!
A lesson I need to learn.
Still waiting to do the post on my CP’s wonderful debut. Launch is delayed a couple of days. My next post… fingers crossed.
Oh, and the photo has no relevance at all to the post! I couldn’t find one I liked that did, and I love this one.
