Last night, I had some trouble sleeping. Normally, this would be a time to turn to my wife and babble at her, but since she was snoring for the first time in a week in what was hopefully going to be a good night’s sleep for her, I had only myself to rumble and mumble around with.
That was probably a mistake.
Because me, myself, and I mumbled to each other until almost midnight, and what we realized was that there is a flaw inherent in the current version of the Maiden’s Tears: it has no character. Oh, there are plenty of characters. Besides Niki, there’s Eddie, Marissa, Zhanna, Locke, Evangeline, etc. But what’s lacking to me is any sense of character. I could deal with half wooden supporting characters if that was the extent of it (deal with as in fix in editing to breathe some personality into them), but when my main character strikes even me, the author, as a bit wooden, I know there’s a problem.
I think I need to start over. That isn’t to say I need to toss what I’ve written; that would be foolish. But I also don’t intend to keep it as if it was the Holy Word inscribed from on high. The draft has faltered, I’ve identified why, and now I need to fix it. That’s going to mean a good deal of rewriting. A challenge I accept, albeit begrudgingly. I’d hoped to have this book out by this fall, but this is the kind of setback that jeopardizes that.
Also, no more late night conversations with myself. They seem to always result in extra work.