So Donna and I the two non-bridal members of our club met up today for a critique- a meeting that lasted about 4 hours and involved two location changes (because where is the fun in staying in just one place). Turned out our original choice of an indie coffee shop was not so much indie and not so much coffee as a bunch of guys eating ham sandwhiches and watching sports on tv. So being the glamourous-cool-anti-establishment-fashionistas we are, we met in the Starbucks of a Target. :-)
Today was a good clean up day for us. Donna worked on her new plot outline-I am SOOOO excited about where her story is going now and I cannot wait to get to the end, it's getting so good. I also got to psycho-analyze her characters (such a guilty pleasure, because they are so fun and nearly as real to me at this point as my own characters are). And Donna helped me iron out some kinks in my world building.
And it turned out that Donna and I were both harboring secret ideas for a chick lit book/series that we got to discuss a little. Donna's idea is seriously Amazing!!! I am like SO jealous I didn't have this idea first (though Im very enamored with my own plan) and I cannot wait to read them, come on Donna, start writing faster!!!!! Quit your day job, there are books that need to be written so I can read them.
And being the first sentence genius that she is (no really, she can tell you what your first sentence should be every time) she helped me come up with the right opening for my chick lit series. I wrote a few pages of it over the weekend-it just kind of came out of me in a way that was fun and easy. Feeling somewhat inspired by the fact that Richelle Mead and Stephenie Meyer and Cara Lockwood all seem to find a way to write multiple series at once/write for young adults and adults at the same time, I'm going to keep this story as a way to relax after hours of working on The Seven Sisters Brandywine, and to keep my creative mojo juices flowing when I'm in hardcore revision mode. It's a blast.
Alrighty, I'm working on world building and outlining tonight, also looking forward to the MTV Movie Awards in a few hours!
So just to make a note about what Frankie said about my new plot outline -- we realized that, even though I'd improved chapter 10, it still wasn't strong enough. Frankie figured out the tough truth - June had the most at stake in chapter 10, so she should be its central focus. (My chapters alternate focus among the three best friends and their individual plotlines.) But according to my chapter order, Maddy should've been next. Here's how we worked around it -- I decided to make chapters 1-9 continue to run Maddy, Nina, June and then chapters 10-18 run June, Nina, Maddy, therefore giving June chapters 9 and 10, which are rightfully hers with the way the plot flows. Plus, it offers a cool, symmetrical arc to the storylines. I only needed a bit of shifting, and all the future chapters' outlines are SO MUCH STRONGER. Thanks Frankie!
ReplyDeleteYeah the new arc is really exciting, glad I could help!!
ReplyDeleteI recently read that Diablo Cody wrote most of Juno at a Target Starbucks. That place must be magical or something.
ReplyDeleteI thought it would be awful, but we hole up in this back corner where you can't even see the store and there's no one else around, so the only distracting thing is the randomly weird people that walk past the window. And they're totally worth it.
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