The Fine Art of Chat Challenges

Andromeda’s tear first round revisions are DONE!

Yes, everyone, it’s been a while. Four months, to be exact. But, I think it’s been worth every moment. When I got that request for revisions, I was very excited. I wanted to make sure I did this right. So, I took my time. I brainstormed and mulled my ideas over. Shaping and testing until I found just the right blend of tension and action and emotion. I wanted to make these changes POP!

So, after a couple of months of chewing over my ideas and…erm, talking my poor husband’s ear off and, well anyone else who would listen, I finally had a solid picture of what I needed to do.

At this point, I thought, Hey! This should be a breeze! I know what I want to accomplish. I know how I want to make my hero squirm. (hehehe You might want to check out my post on The Art of Hero Torture at The Otherworld Diner.) And, I know how I’m going to really ramp up the external tension. So, let’s write!

But, it wasn’t that easy. You see, this was my first experience with requested rewrites. I’d never gone back to a completed work and had to make, what turned out to be MAJOR plot changes. I had all these words in front of me and every time I went to change them, I froze! It was like hitting a mental road block. I knew what I had to do. I knew what I wanted to say. I just couldn’t get past all those words that were already there. I most certainly couldn’t delete them. Ack!

Yet, they had to go. They weren’t allowing me to make these new changes. And, believe me, the new stuff? Way better and HOTTER than the original. I just needed to get past my block. How did I do it? Chat Challenges!

What are Chat Challenges, you ask? Well, let me tell you, they are the best thing since sliced bread. But, first, let me tell you how I got around all those pre-existing words. NO! I didn’t delete them! I get shudders just thinking about that. I moved them. To a scratch pad in the word-processing program I use (I don’t use Word. But, that’s a post for another day).

Ok, now that I had moved all those pre-existing words, I needed to replace them. But, for some reason I had a hard time getting past the fact that, although I couldn’t see the old stuff, my brain knew it was there. I just couldn’t get past staring at my newly blank screen. Gah! How frustrating! I had all these great ideas on the changes I wanted to make. I even had dialogue and entire scenes worked out like a movie in my head, but I just couldn’t make it flow to my fingers. I couldn’t disconnect the part of my brain (Hey! I heard that!) that knew I’d already written stuff here.

And, that’s where the Chat Challenges come in. I am a member of Romance Divas. They have a live chat. A bunch of us will go into the chat room at the same time and choose a time keeper. That person wields the *whip*. Ok, so it isn’t a real whip. Just the sound of one cracking. Once we hear it, we all go to our respective works-in-progress and write our hearts out until we hear the whip crack once more. Usually after 20 minutes, hence the need for a time keeper. Here’s the fun part, we all come back to the chat room and post how many words we were able to write in that 20 minutes.

And, therein lies the pure genius of the Chat Challenge. With only 20 minutes to write as many words as possible and with several people going to see your numbers, you tend to forget about everything but getting the words down. MY INTERNAL EDITOR KIND OF SLOWED DOWN! I say kind of, because I can’t shut the freaking thing off. It really sucks sometimes. Also a post for another time, but did you ever notice, the more you know about the craft of writing, the harder it is to write?

Anyway, through these Chat Challenges, I was able to get past what used to be on those pages and just write my new vision. And, when I read through my completed revisions for the first time the other day, I was shocked to see they weren’t as rough as I thought they were going to be! I’m polishing now, but this puppy is going out soon. I am very happy with the new path my characters have taken to get to the end. The basic plot’s the same, but the middle is completely new. As in it doesn’t even resemble the original. And, boy oh boy, am I happy with the outcome.

Ok, so I’m off to polish my revisions. Happy reading and/or writing, everyone!

Sandy :-)


*August 25, 2007 at Sandra's Goings On - Guest Blogger, Betty Hanawa ~ More Than She Wished For