Do your characters refuse to cooperate? Are you typing along when, wham!, someone reveals depths you didn't know they had? Something that has the potential to change everything? I love that and I hate it. Love it because it's cool. Hate it because it usually means I may have to rewrite a lot of stuff.
Did I mention I'm on the third rewrite of SEDUCING EVANGELINE? The first time, it wasn't going anywhere. The second, it was going, but the wrong direction. And then I realized I'd given the hero the wrong job, the heroine not enough motivation, and the conflict not enough zing. Now I think I have it right and still I get stuck. I have a subplot involving the heroine's relationship with her sister that is giving me fits. I don't know why. I know why they are estranged. I know they have to work on the relationship. But I don't know how much of that is important to the central problem of the book. And I hate the part where I have to write the scenes, knowing I may lose them in the end anyway. I don't have a problem cutting, but I hate to do the work in the first place if I'm going to cut it. Catch-22, dammit.
(I'm reading Wuthering Heights for the first time ever. OMG. I don't want to put it down. How did this sheltered woman write this story? It's brutal and ugly and amazing and beautiful all at once. What talent.)
I can’t wait to read “Seducing Evangeline.” About motivation for sister estrangement… actually it would be more unusual if they were talking. You know that in my family (I have four sisters) that we barely talk. My sisters are girly girls and I am much more independent. I have two sisters who think they are entitled… Maybe Evangeline’s sister felt that Evangeline was supposed to give her money every time she asked… or sent her daughters to live with Evangeline… or something like that.
Wurthering Heights… had quite an impact on me the first time I read it at 16. I have not felt the same about it when I read it as an adult though. It was written very well.. 😉
Thanks, Cyn! Evie’s sister is ten years younger and still a teenager. So, she’s got that teen angst in addition to a bad relationship with Evie. 🙂 She isn’t really talking much at all, though Evie tries.
I wonder how WH would have affected me if I’d read it as a teen. It’s pretty powerful and affecting now. I really can’t believe I got all the way through grad school without ever having to read this book. 🙂