Diggin' the Dirt

Some days, it sucked to be a Muse. Today being one of them...

Those lines look simple enough. I like them. They say plenty about the POV character and establish the tone of the book. They also define the hero's voice at the beginning of my "live" work in progress at textnovel, Muse Struck.

But cripes, what I went through to get the beginning of that book right. That's one of the problems with writing a book "live" online, as is the case with the serial novels in progress at Textnovel, a site that's very much like American Idol for writers.

But I'm not a first draft writer. My first drafts are as dirty as they come. And no, I'm not talking about sex scenes when I say that. :)

Seems I have a love/hate relationship with beginnings. I adore that bright, shiny, new penny feel of new projects when the idea stream runs fast and furious. What I hate is getting deep enough in new books to realize that my beginning isn't really the beginning at all, as was the case with Muse Struck.

While the original opening scene carried its weight to build character and set up a subplot, it didn't do enough in the world building dapartment. But I didn't realize that until my muse hero, Dante Erato, showed on the scene. As Dante interacted with my heroine, a down on her luck photographer, I got to wondering, why Dante, and why now?

Which led to another scene, the one that set Dante's journey with the heroine into motion. Seems Dante has to fall in love. Fast. Or else Gaia's gonna be pissed. That's also the scene that became the beginning of Muse Struck,albeit some 20,000 words after the original beginning.

And yeah, I'm happy with the new opening. But I'm not happy with the hours of paralyzing headbanging I went through trying to get it right the first time. I'm coming to realize if I spend hours looking for that perfect opening, the ideal word, the right image, then I'm just going to end up paralyzed.

Sometimes, the only answer to moving forward is BIKHOK--butt in chair, hands on keyboard.