Learn something new

Ture, I'm a librarian and deal with a lot of people every day, but it's also true that I learn something new. I like that aspect of my job, learning.

It's also true in writing. I may think I know what happened when, but once you get into the nitty gritty of it all, the real research, the facts of the matter, it's a different story entirely. My favorite? Taking X and making it into a story. Doesn't matter what X is (and no I won't be going into an algebra problem here!)

X is whatever you find fascinating. X is whatever you want to use for your story. X is whatever you wish it to be.

That's what makes writing and life! so fun. Learning. Once you close your mind, it's all over.

~By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Richard Dawkins

Virtually speaking, I'm over at Bad Girl (And Bad Boy) Writer's Block with DAY 11 of Dark Desires of the Druids: Sex & Subterfuge's blog tour. And what am I talking about today? You'll never guess. :)

Nearly finished!

I'm pleased to report that after months of hair pulling, teeth gnashing, head thumping frustration, I'm nearly finished my current WIP tentatively entitled Paranormal Investigations. Now, to be fair, this story was finished. Or nearly so. Needed one last read through.

As I read through it, I realized several important things:

1. The beginning didn't work with the rest of the story. Tried to be funny, didn't work, changed mid-story, needed to fix the beginning.
2. There were big sections in the middle that went one way and ended up another. Now I'm all about the red herring and sneaky twist, but not the dangling plots. Had to snip those out and trim everything up.
3. 10,000 words is easier to say you'll add than to actually add. Sure, I can go through and add a word per page, but honestly that never works. Plus I ended up cutting so much I had to add closer to 25,000 words in the end. Never easy in a finished story.
4. Starting from scratch is usually easier. And it was close, but I didn't give in. I liked the story, the plot, even entire chunks of the story! I just needed to fix it.

So for a story that I was going to send out no later than Christmas 2009, I'm now going to send out (with a note of apology) in April 2010. But since I'm so much happier with this story, with the way it flows, with the way it all works, it was worth it.

Ever done that? Thought your story worked then realzied no. It needed serious work? What did you do? Start from scratch? Add in and hope everything flowed?