Yeah, Yeah, I know, a third entry in one day...

...but I just had to post this.

Dave, it's about writing, so feel free to skip it.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, I've been going back and forth with an editor about Camera Shy. Aside from the requisite "more sex" critique, the single biggest problem was that Jason and Simone don't meet until chapter 7. I wrote it that way because that's really the soonest I could get them together with the way I had the story laid out.

Welllllll it turns out that doesn't fly very well in romance. Surprise surprise. Some publishers are more flexible about it than others, but chapter 7 ain't gonna cut it.

So I've been wracking my brain, trying to figure out how to get them to meet earlier without totally screwing up the story. To say that this has been driving me batty would be the understatement of the year.

The editor and I had a little e-mail pow-wow yesterday, and I said that I'd managed to tweak things so I could get Jason and Simone to meet in chapter 3, but I just couldn't figure out how to get them together sooner. She said chapter 3 still won't cut it, but she encouraged me to keep working on it, which made me extra optimistic - there must be something about Camera Shy that she likes, because most editors would've completely kicked it back by now.

She wants them to meet within the first 10-12 pages, preferably the first 6-8 pages. Yikes. So tonight, I was wracking my brain again. There had to be a way. There had to be. Maybe if I could convince them to meet in chapter 2. Or the end of chapter 1.

Sometime in the first 2,000 words, that's all I ask. C'mon, Jason and Simone, you two owe me big time. Work. With. Me.

HEADDESK.
HEADDESK.
HEADDESK.

And then, like manna from heavens, it fell from the sky and landed in my brain in the most jarring "DUH" moment I've had since...well...since I realized that damned door wouldn't move was because I was pushing against a "pull" sign...

Jason and Simone now make contact 600 words into chapter 1...also known as PAGE 3.

Hell. Yes.

This may not make sense to anyone else, but it has me doing a little mental happy dance.