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delay

Goal Update: A Bit of a Delay

February 28, 2019 by Elizabeth Drake

My beta reader was taking a bit longer than normal on this particular piece of work, and while I was a bit worried about it, they have a very busy life.

Yeah, that wasn’t it (though they do). Nice try on my part.

She gave me some high level feedback explaining why it was taking a bit longer.

beta-reader
The look she gave me was very similar.

There will be a bit of a delay in releasing Knight of Valor.

She noted I needed to tighten my beginning. Doable within my original release date timeline.

More than that, I needed to flesh out my hero in the beginning. She thought he felt flat. I cringed a little, knowing why she was saying it and where it came from.

I wrote this book over four years ago. It was one of three books I completed when I first got back into writing, and the only one I loved the characters enough to try to salvage. The other two are now buried on my hard drive and are not fit for human eyes.

But I loved Sir Marcus. I wanted to do him justice. And through him and his story, and I pushed myself to do better as a writer. His story helped me learn a lot about finding my voice, plot and character development, and even trusting myself as a writer.

So, I’d set Knight of Valor aside for a while and work on other things, become a better writer, and tackle this story again.

During the process, I read a whole bunch of craft books. And you can see their influence on the story. One of them was how to write a romance hero…and I did Sir Marcus a lot of disservice. Granted, he overcomes the bad writing advice towards the middle on the book, but it takes him a while.

church-3599448_640
I may be shabby from time to time, but his faith in me in strong.

At the time, they were telling romance authors that romance readers wanted alpha heroes. Don’t even bother writing anything else as it won’t sell and an agent won’t want it. So I changed him.

And he was no longer Sir Marcus.

Don’t misunderstand me. He is neither meek nor mild. He was not the “chosen one” and forced to do anything. He saw evil, and if there was a chance he could destroy that evil, he had to try. He dedicated most of his life training to do just that.

But he’s still a genuinely nice guy. The kind of person who’d come over and help you fix your roof because he heard you were having trouble without being asked. You’d share an ale afterwards, and that would be all the thanks he’d need or want.

Punch a kid or kick or dog? You don’t want him to see you do that.

Kill a village to fuel a evil spell?

Time to run. Fast.

middle-ages-knight

So, I need to let his true personality shine through the first half of the book as well as the second. No easy task, that.

Oh, and I need to fix a plot hole, tighten up my pacing, and remove a few loose ends from earlier drafts I missed. And this is before I get back the full list of revisions.

*deep breath*

I see why this is taking a bit of time to get back the beta read. I also know I sent this out for just this reason.

I am literally on my eighteenth revision of this story. Yeah. Eighteenth. That I’ve counted. The first draft and several subsequent ones (no idea how how many four, maybe five?), I didn’t number and track. I am really close to this story, and I’ve put a lot of work into it. I can sometimes lose the forest through the trees. So I need more help on this than most.

It means a lot to me. I really want to get it right.

So, this is going to be a large revision, not a small tighten-things-up late game revision.

And that’s okay. Sir Marcus deserves the best story I can give him.

Yes, it means my entire plan for the year needs to change.

Yes, it means I will not make that April publishing deadline.

Both are okay.

I want to give you the best story I can.

Delaying the release date until June or July gives me the time to make it the best that I can right now.

You deserve that, and so does Sir Marcus.

Filed Under: Goals Tagged With: beta reader, deadline, delay, Goals, Hero, Publishing, release date, revision, romance author, Romance Novels, Romance Writer, Setting goals, Sir Marcus

Parade of Orange Barrels

August 4, 2017 by Elizabeth Drake

It’s that time of year where I live. A parade of orange barrels starts to line our streets in late March or early April. And they continue to haunt us until the snow really takes hold.

Once the parade begins, I try to avoid the road construction as much as possible. Take alternate routes, choose different stores to shop at, or just buy more online.

construction 1

The one thing I have been trying to figure out, though, is why the construction barrels go up weeks before work ever starts. It seems rather silly to block off roads long before the start of road construction. I mean, why snarl and tangle up traffic if there’s no need?

construction3

Of course, this lesson become personal when my main route into work went under construction. Literally, the street right outside the building. I can’t not go to work anymore, and there really are no alternate routes.

So, a stretch of road that used to take less than three minutes to traverse now takes ten. Sometimes more. Yet, we haven’t seen actual work being done. The blocked off section of road looks exactly as it did three weeks ago.

I suppose it’s possible something is happening. I just can’t say what. And as I drive by it every day, I like to think would have noticed.

construction2

Perhaps there was a delay in getting the construction teams out to the site as there has been so much rain. Or perhaps there was a miscommunication as to when the timing of the work starts.

My cynical side, however, remembers my years as an auditor and how construction companies worked. The general contractor doesn’t actually own the barrels. This is usually outsourced to a third party that owns the barrels and is responsible for all of the “signaling” work.

So my cynic is wondering if the company that owned the barrels finished one job and just decided to set up the barrels for the next rather than store them between jobs.

I have to think this is just this my cynic. No way would that be legal, right? Right?!?

 

 

Filed Under: Road Construction, Uncategorized Tagged With: alternate route, buy online, construction barrels, cynic, delay, rain delay, road construction, traffic

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