First of all, I’d like to wish everyone a very happy Coming Out Day! May it be filled with rainbows and unicorns and glorious, glittering gayness. <3
Coming Out Tip: If you dress up like Batman and Robin and proceed to do a jaunty dance together, your friends and loved ones may get the message without your even having to say, “Hey, we’re gay.” Just something to keep in mind.
In other news, I’ve been rather busy as of late with various non-internet-related endeavors, hence my lack of updates. Last weekend was spent having a writers’ weekend with my bestest of best pals, during which time we workshopped each other’s stories, made homemade chicken soup, and further cemented our general dorky awesomeness by wearing matching “WRITER” T-shirts.
Fear the selfie. But don’t look too long into the dark circles under my eyes, as they may devour your soul~~~
Throughout the course of our writing weekend, I was able to get some feedback on two of the newer chapters of Chosen, and received some very useful commentary re: the character of Elisabeth (a.k.a., Mr. Defrin’s wife and Nicholas’ mother, portrayed by Amanda Abbington in my Dream Movie Cast).
In the previous version of Chosen, Elisabeth was very much a non-entity, more of a plot point than a character, and about as likable as a sofa cushion. Thus, in this version, I’ve taken great pains to make her more vibrant and personable, though it seems I carried things too far in the opposite direction, as the current criticism towards her character is that she’s “too Donna Reed.” Which…okay, is fair. She’s a few birds and a song away from being a Disney princess, and given that the rest of the book is a dark-ish commentary re: how awful it is to hate a group of people based on the word of an oft-translated holy book, her twirly cheerful Disney-ness does, perhaps, stick out a bit.
A bit. Perhaps.
As such, I’ve been doing a lot of work on the editing of Chosen this week, and am pretty happy with how things are going. Plot holes are being mercilessly eradicated, Elisabeth is being de-Disney-fied, and the book is well on its way to actually being ready for the next step in this whole crazy writing-and-publishing process – namely, trying to find an agent who will carry my humble little story to the biggest of big publishers and thus secure its future as the inevitable Most Wondrous and Popular Book In the History of the World. (This is sure to happen, or my Magic 8-Ball is a filthy, filthy liar.)
(Or possibly I don’t have a Magic 8-Ball at all and just wanted an excuse to use this gif.)
Anyway. Feeling a bit under the weather today, so I may be forced to spend much of my time lying in bed watching episodes of The Weekenders and eating leftover Chinese food. I’d love to be productive, I really would, but what choice do I have?
None. None at all.
