Silver Bells and Cockle Shells

Wedding bells are tolling for Malcolm and Amelia -- for about the fourth time. After rereading AN INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE on Saturday, I identified a couple of areas that I want to change, and their wedding and subsequent wedding breakfast are at the top of the list. While the rest of the book is snappy and dialogue-driven, the wedding and breakfast are throwbacks to my first draft; I loved the concept and so kept the scenes virtually intact, but now they don't fit in with the rest of the book, and the heavy usage of narrative instead of dialogue makes the pace come to a screeching (albeit brief -- but not brief enough to maintain agent interest) halt.

So the concept is staying the same, but I'm rewriting that section from scratch. I wrote four or five pages tonight while sitting in a cafe after work, and was intrigued to discover that, while I changed everything and kept only a couple of original lines, I told the same exact story, with totally different details, without deviating from the original word count by more than 100 words. This surprised me; clearly I have a strong sense of how long the scene should last, even if my version of the scene has changed.

Overall, I'm happy with the progress I made tonight and am feeling much better about the rest of the edits on my plate. It was really hard to jump in at first; I "finished" AN INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE in December, and all of my creative focus has been on Ferguson and Madeleine instead. But once I started writing, Malcolm and Amelia came back to me -- and I think they're happy that their wedding is going to reflect the rest of their ridiculous romance.

Now, though, it's bedtime; I need to carve out some writing time tomorrow, which will be difficult due to an early-morning dentist appointment and a dinner engagement with some friends. Wish me (and Malcolm and Amelia) luck!