Starting the next novel

[Christa M. Miller]

Crap. Has it really been four months since I posted here? Crap. Hopefully this post from my other blog will explain my absence a little!

Meanwhile, I've gotten to work on the next novel. I already have a fair number of rough scenes written, plus an outline and character sketches. I've been contemplating how to go about revising the thing (yes--already!), largely because my last novel was difficult to revise; I'm a big-picture person, so keeping track of all those little details was kind of a killer.

I believe in outlines, but only when they're warranted and not to such an extent that you can't still discover things about character or, as a result of character discovery, let the plot wander off in a different direction (as long as it ends up at the climax, which I already wrote). So I don't have all those little details ironed out.

What I do have, which I didn't with HURT, was experience writing and revising short stories. That may make the difference. I don't think I could revise sentence by sentence as I've heard some writers do--that would be too details-oriented--but I might be able to revise chapter by chapter. Treat them like a short story, write those little details down that I think might come back later.

Could it work? I'll find out!