Revising . . . never ends . . .

I did go to Marjorie Rynearson's Story Structure Workshop. Marjorie met with the eight of us in a conference room on the north side of the Loop. Since she's a well-known actress who also has written and directed plays of her own, I hoped her thearical background would offer me a fresh approach to my own writing, and it did. I love characters, but struggle with plots. I've read the plot doctors and tried graphing things out and so on, but wound up with plots lacking flow and life.
Marjorie started with motivation--what does the principle character want? This is the actor's first question. I wish I'd attended one of these workshops a long time ago. Each of us wrote a bit, then the group commented on the offering. I should say the participants were all somewhat experienced writers, actors, editors, etc, so the critiques were to the point. I dragged out the beginning of a book I wrote two years ago that had been languishing in my computer memory, one of those stories that just don't go anywhere. Okay, I thought, nothing to lose here. I'll try it from Marjorie's perspective. Rethinking one of my major characters. Hmm. The first paragraphs came to life. It's not the greatest writing since Hemingway, but its a hell of a lot better than the first draft. I'm going to work on that one as soon as I get Ravenswood sent off to my editor. In a week, if all goes well. 

I've had two weekends with the KDP Select free promo and am a happy camper. Hundreds and hundreds of 'sales'! I'm hoping the readers will love the book and some will even write reviews for Kindle. It's hard for me to ask folks for reviews, but it's looking like I may have to. Maybe start with those who've emailed me that they love Seraphy?  Or the ones who've told me they'll write a review?  Or you guys who read this blog?  Yes, you.

Nearly finished with this revision of Ravenswood. Each time through, I have new insights into my characters. Hmm. this revision thng could go on for years . . . but I do want to get this second installment of Seraphy's adventures up on Kindle by June. Thank God for deadlines, even those I make for myself.

KDP Select and Me

I signed up for the KDP Select program, which allows readers to rent Chicago Stories: West of Western free, but will pay me for each rental. Sounded good to me, especially since libraries struggle with ebooks. Some publishers are refusing to allow libraries to lend their ebooks. 

Signing with KDP was one of my better ideas. Following Rob Walker's advice, I decided to use the promo days a couple at a time.This last weekend was my first, and my sales jumped a whopping 5000%! So okay, I hadn't had all that many sales before. Still.

And the books were free for the two day promotion, so I'm not getting any $$ for them. Who cares? As a debut author, getting those books into readers' hands is gold. Love you, KDP.

Next: finish revising Chicago Stories 2: Ravenswood and get it off to my editor, Elizabeth Lyon, for vetting next month. Or eviscerating. Then rewriting and I hope to have it off to the formatter in June.

Next weekend I'm going to Chicago for actress Marjie Rynearson's Story Structure Workshop.  Actor/director Jeff Dudek invited me and these are theater people, not novelists. The workshop offers me a fresh way of approaching a story and I hope it will help me with plotting.

And I'm taking spending some time in Pilsen, the Mexican/American neighborhood Seraphy's working in in my third Chicago Stories mystery. I love Pilsen.