Repetive Strain Injury

Still sore from the RSI…

I’ve found playing the piano helps the most.  Sitting at a computer doesn’t necessarily aggravate it but talking on a mobile makes it worse.   Also having problems with the writing at the moment.  I’m working on a psychological thriller, trying to get the plot right.  I took out a problem character situation, thinking this would allow the story to run more smoothly.  Instead, it has knocked the entire story off course.

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RSI Nightmare

Discomfort and soreness in my arms and fingers coming from the neck area. I managed to get rid of RSI for a few days by avoiding using the mobile phone too much, but it came back when I started spending large amounts of time on the phone again. Activities like playing the piano and writing at the computer don’t seem to cause problems, thankfully.

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Story Update

Basically, everything seems to be going okay with the rewrite.  I had my first real attack of writer’s block yesterday, but it actually worked in my favour.   After three or so hours of sitting there feeling frustrated, I decided to rework a previous scene.  This is turn has led to a completely new twist in the plot that I would never even have considered before.   I have several other new angles to explore now that I’ve reached the problematic stage (just over 40,000 words).

I’m missing the other two novels, both psychological thrillers, especially the stuff about  memory flashbacks, but it’s important to sort out the problems in the first.  At some point, I expect to work with an editor who has been recommended.

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Struggling with RSI again

It’s back. Discomfort in the elbows and arms coming from the neck area. I suppose I’ll have to dig out the exercises the physio gave me last year.

I’m a classical pianist, and I spend hours at the computer writing fiction most days. Yet, neither is causing the problem. At one point, my sleeping angle was doing it, but now I think it’s the mobile phone. I’m spending too much time in the wrong position.

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Another Rewrite

I’ve managed to get to 34,000 words in the rewrite of my first novel, a psychological thriller.  Recently, a literary agent pointed out that some parts of the plot are still muddled, mainly those sections told from the male character’s point of view.  Surprisingly, many of the problem sections have been easier to tackle than I expected and simplifying the man’s viewpoint has helped a lot, allowing me to develop material elsewhere.  I’m about three thousand words down from previously but I expect to make up the difference at some point.

For reasons mentioned elsewhere, I’m reluctant about copying sections from the previous draft and pasting them into the rewrite, like I did last time.   Mostly,  I’m clarifying details and developing scenes.  

I miss the other novel I started recently, the one about the therapist who begins to have flashbacks in a secluded cottage on the Dorset coast, but I feel I should deal with the structural problems in the first novel.

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Happy Easter

Wishing all my regular readers a Happy Easter or Passover…

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Ruthless Plot Editing:Novel Writing

Unfortunately, I’m back to picking through some elements of the mystery plot in my first psychological thriller.  According to a literary agent, a lot of the novel is good, aside from the antagonist’s central story question that makes the story muddled.  Part of the problem, I think, has got to do with the copy and paste facility on most word processing programmes.  Eager to keep some of the descriptions and vivid scene setting in a previous draft, I moved several of the scenes to new sections using copy and paste, and rewrote these scenes in a different viewpoint, believing I’d finally solved the original problem.  The problem was never really dealt with, only restructured. 

When I read the entire novel through over a couple of evenings, I couldn’t believe how many inconsistencies there were in the new viewpoint chapters.   I think it is now a case of simplifying the revised sections and only working with those plot elements that support the protagonist’s story.

Sadly, I’ve had to place the third novel aside while I address the problems in the first, but I’ve backed everything up and look forward to returning to it later in the year.

 

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More Revision Needed

I’ve been told that parts of my first novel are muddled, so I’ve had to put the third novel on hold while I go back over the plot in the first. It’s a real nuisance. I’ve enjoyed working on the third, another psychological thriller, and had managed nearly 20,000 words in a ten day period. Hopefully, the required revision won’t take long.

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Thriller Update

I’m now twelve thousand words into a new psychological thriller I began last week. The writing is going well, I think. I’m sticking to my own advice about making lists of story questions. I’m also having short brainstorming sessions before writing each day where I look at words from the list of story questions and write down the first word that comes to mind. This helps free the imagination.

Like before, I’m rotating the viewpoints with one viewpoint per chapter.  Like in the other stories,  the main character will start to have flashbacks at some point of an event they’ve blanked out.   Hence, I’ve been reading up on Dissociative Amnesia.

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