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.

Correcting a Published work on Kindle, Reviews

West of Western's been up on Kindle for a few days now and I've found twelve errors that somehow slipped through the zillion proof readings. Nasty little buggers, words out of order and several misplaced quotation marks. Ick. When I emailed Hitch at booknook.biz in a funk about this, Len sent me their panicked author correction form. Once I have the corrected pdf I'll send it to Kindle and all will be well. I think. One of the Great Good Things about publishing on Kindle is the ease with which changes in the published work may be accomplished. Especially good for messy people like me.

While I'm waiting for the corrected version I've stopped all promotion. Why promote a flawed book when a better version is in the works?

Even flawed, I've received one 5 star review and one 3 star review on Amazon. I was sad about the 3 star one until I read it carefully, then decided it's pretty good after all. The reviewer was dead right about the typos. I'm thinking about the other criticisms and looking at the revision I'm working on now with them in mind. More, please!

While all this is going on, I'm revising Chicago Story 2: Ravenswood, which will be going to editor Elizabeth Lyons next month for criticism. At some point the story has taken on a life of its own and it's hard to remember I ever made it up. Cheers.