Changing genres

Warning: Random bouncing thoughts.

Ugh! I'm mentally drained. I have been writing my butt off--figuratively--though it would be really cool if I did in real time. I've been writing roughly 3000 words a day for eight days which ends up to about eighty or so pages. With one big push I should finish my MG novel today, though it might be Monday before I can wrap up all the loose ends--the happy crap. Then it needs to sit and ferment before I dive in to fix all the major problems. Trust me, there are A LOT of problems: POV shifts (3rd person to 1st, etc), tense shifts, general crappy sentences/structure. You know, the normal stuff to fix.

Anger is becoming an issue with me, probably from sitting in a damn kitchen chair for eight days straight. I really want to kill something right now. I NEED to kill something. Killing bad guys doesn't have the intense emotional jerk that killing a character's friend does. But it's a middle grade story, can I really kill someone? You bet your sweet bupkiss I can. I wanted to kill my main character's mom, but it really didn't work for this story. Maybe later. So it's either her new friend or his dad. His dad is too far removed, so friend it is, 'cause I can't kill the gnome, can I?Oh, no, Rory has a role to play way down the road. He lives, though I could do some damage to him.

Why did I switch to writing middle grade from writing fantasy and romance?

Because I sucked at writing romance, and I couldn't sell my fantasy if my life depended on it. Trust me, I tried. So I played with picture books for a little while. I liked writing them, but I haven't drunk the secret elixir to figure out the perfect formula. I'll still dabble, but as a sideline.

I returned to square one and thought about my writing strengths. I love writing fantasy. Not the dark urban stuff--trust me, I tried that too--but the lighter fantasy. Okay, I have a snarky voice, but it is definitely one on the level of my eight year old, not other adults. I like stupid jokes and puns, which I tend to write in my stories.

I have the advantage of buying/reading a lot of middle grade stories, since I check them out for my daughter. After reading a few of them, I realized I could write one. Don't get the false opinion that these are easy-peasy, putzy stories to write, they aren't. The have to be just as convoluted and exciting as adult stuff, maybe even more so. Kids do not forgive. Kids stop reading in the middle of a sentence never to pick up the book again. I've seen it first hand. Adults might give an author a second chance after a crappy book, not so kids. Plus, kids are growing and will outgrow the story before you get a chance to write the next one. The window of opportunity is very narrow. In other words, I'm not writing for the current population of third graders, I'm writing for the toddlers of the world.

After this story sits a few days. I intend to hit my second draft pretty hard. I want to finish it by the end of June to enter it in the Delacorte contest. This is a tight deadline, but doable. We'll see how it goes, won't we?

I'll probably work on the third draft during July and August, while thinking about the second story in the series. Plus, I can make my kiddo read it to see if it has staying power.

I think this main character has a lot of potential. Why?

Because I've already written her adult story. These middle grade stories are the background for who she became in The Leprechaun Connection. See? I just might sell that story even though it has about sixty rejections so far. And we have come full circle.

Write on!