Up to April 16 I was working pretty steadily on a new novella-length thing based on current events. Then that got to me. I was having to go back and look at the news from Italy, London, New York, Las Vegas, Minneapolis … my characters are in all those places in 2020, so I couldn’t simply say LA LA LA and go my merry way. This thing is a day-in-the-life thing, set on March 23, the Monday after California’s shelter-at-home order came down. I was heading into the homestretch of this thing, with four or five chapters left to write, and I had the uneasy feeling that not all my characters were in good shape.
Because this is fiction, and because it’s a day-in-the-life, the character in danger will probably be okay. He’s not well on March 23, 2020 of story-universe time, but a month later I think he’s all right.
Regardless, the suspicion that this was what is needed for the project (I write romance, not fantasy) sent me running for cover, or more accurately for a rewrite. Back in 2013 I published a novel called HOME SWEET HOME which was not part of my story world. For one thing, the world didn’t yet exist as such in my mind. But more to the point, this book was set in the 1980s. It’s also in yet another style, being all one POV with a first-person narrator.
The book had some issues which I addressed in a previous revision. This time I pulled down the published edition and did a comprehensive read-through revision. It’s longer now and - I think - considerably better. A lot of messy artifacts have been cleaned up, the timeline clarified, and (as always happens) the secondary characters given more respect.
I love rewriting, I’ll be honest. In real life, there is nothing you can do to fix the past. You can only adapt to it, and move on.
And if you know me at all, you might guess that after finishing that rewrite, I was inspired. Between April 19 and April 25 I conceived and completed a 31000-word novella, in which one of the secondary characters from HOME SWEET HOME gets his own new love story. It will not be the next thing I publish, for reasons, but I hope to have it out by the end of the year.
For now, I need to get back to work on the novel I started writing in March, and on this day-in-the-life thing. Stay safe, everybody.