I worked on revising my proposal yesterday. I didn't get very far, but then I'm rewriting an entire scene with characters I haven't worked with in at least a year. It might possibly be longer than that. This is the story that every single time I tried to work on it, I received revisions or galleys or something else that took precedence. Since I write by listening to the characters and since Sloan and Tyler are pretty far away right now, it was a struggle. Part of it is what I was seeing was boring and I had to skip ahead to when something happened. But. But that left me trying to ground the reader in time and place. Hmm. Maybe I will back it up. A couple of paragraphs might go a long way toward making the rest of the story write easier.
On one of the few boards I visit (This one is mostly writers), the question was raised if you knew you could only write three more books in your lifetime, which stories would they be. This proposal that I'm working on is definitely one of them. I've wanted to write Sloan and Tyler since I first had them come in and start talking to me--over fifteen years ago. Of course, I wasn't a good enough writer then to do them justice and I was smart enough to know it. I wrote a few pages, but quickly put the story aside and said I'd pick it up when I thought I could handle it. Considering how many times I've rewritten and revised this proposal, I might have been overly optimistic about being ready now, but I want to write this story so much.
I see it as the first book in a series, one with an infinite number of stories, and I have a clear vision of what I want this series to be. And yet I can't seem to get the story right on paper. It's very frustrating to me.
And while I'm trying to work on this, I can hear this clock ticking away in my head. I have to get this proposal done ASAP because I can't afford to sacrifice too much more time. I have a book due in less than 4 months that I haven't started yet. I've got a ton of ideas flowing in for this one right now and that's part of what's interfering with hearing Sloan and Tyler, but I don't want to stem the flood because I need to hear Creed and Maia.
Like I said, I need to clone myself. So many ideas, too little time.
