"Wordcount" Wednesday

I don't really have a word count to report this week. As I said a week and a half ago, I finished Numb. This week I spent about half an hour printing the manuscript out and it's now going on the shelf for about a month or two so I can get some emotional distance. Right now, I think it's a pile of garbage (it's a first draft, after all), but my opinion might change.

So what have I been up to writing wise the past two weeks? Not too much. My side of the family went to a cabin up at Leech Lake in northern Minnesota for a week. Great name, right? It was a lot of fun. Finished reading a book, played lots of Wii games my brother and his wife thoughtfully brought, and hung out with the kids a lot. For example, I had the great privilege of helping my son cross the mighty Mississippi on foot. Well, at the headwaters, anyway.


But I did get to read through The Escape, my NaNoWriMo project from this past November.


The crazy thing is, I remember thinking that this was the biggest pile of garbage I'd ever written. Now I think there are some good parts. The ending, in particular, works quite well.



There are soft spots that need fixing, though. The characterization of my main character needs some work so she can show some growth by the end. I also have some key concepts that need to be introduced better. And I think I have some notes somewhere around here from when I wrote this thing.

It looks like July will be spent in rewriting land. First comes The Escape. I have to somehow synthesize some of the ideas I've got knocking around in my head and gel them all together. After that, I might take another crack at Return of the Mourning Dove, a secular fantasy I wrote a year or two ago. One of my fabulous critique partners sent me back a manuscript's worth of notes and I haven't had the chance to sift through them all yet. And by the time I'm done with all that, it might be time to take a run at Numb again and see what I can do with that.

What has me a little worried right now is that I don't have any new ideas to work on. I've actually been looking at brainstorming books in Barnes and Noble to see if they might have anything that could help. We'll have to wait and see.