Please feel free to look around - you'll find information about the group's work, our group diary as well as the writing diaries of individual members.
I've been editing the 26% of my manuscript that was already written in order to develop the characters more. As I got to know them better I had to go back and add more detail to the original sketch thus bringing them properly to life.
I know a lot of writers get to know their characters inside and out before they write the first word but I can't work that way. I've tried but it won't happen. I'm just too damn eager to get on with the writing.
I like to get the start of the story down so that I know how the characters react to each other and then go back and develop them more. Around a quarter of the story's usually written by the time I do that so this one ran true to form and I'm liking my heroine far more now than I was to start with. It's one thing having issues, but understanding those issues is something else entirely.
So, that's out of the way and the word count's increased by about 1500 even though I've chopped several scenes that weren't needed and a fair amount of saggy dialogue's been tightened. The next hurdle is going to be getting past the 50% mark.
You see, once I get to around half way, that's the point where I usually give up. Not because I can't write anymore, but because there's always another story nagging to be written. It's an ongoing thing; one story follows another, the next always being the better one. But it never is. It's just a different one.
The closest I've ever got to a completed manuscript is about 80%. And what happened? An ex who thought he should "teach me a lesson" deleted it without a backup copy! Maybe it would never have reached the stage where I could have sent it out to agents but at least I almost got there.
This time I intend to take it all the way. No more messing about. Whether I'm ever published or whether writing remains purely a hobby, I intend to finish my stories. I've got to a point in my life where I want the happy endings!
