A Place for Everything

I'm sitting in the dark on a Thursday morning staring at my computer screen. Why? I really love the dark. I know there's much to be embraced in the light, but I have extremely sensitive eyes and I prefer the dark. It drives my husband crazy, since he feels if there isn't a light on in the house at night he'll stumble into something and hurt himself--whereas I love finding my way in the dark. We compromise and leave a light on. :) (when he's here, that is)

My new living room in HUGE. I'd say you could take four of my old living rooms and put them in this new one. Seriously. I love it. The best of both worlds would be having this size living room when I lived in Ut and was hosting writers' meetings every month. There would be no lack of space to sit. Ah, well.

As things are, I've designated part of the room for my office and part of the room for the living room itself. A whole other section is where I plan to put three large bookcases, maybe even four, for all my books and future books. Not the ones I'm writing, but the ones I plan to read. Initially I was going to section off part of my large dining room (yes, I have one of those, too, now) into a library, but I've chosen to make that my sewing area instead.

Putting together a house is like organizing a story. No, really. As I go through The Tyrant King for the last time before sending it out to beta readers, I've come across things I missed including originally. Finding the right place to put these particular tidbits can be challenging. Some things can't come too early in the story; other things would be out of place too late in the story. These little scenes are lead-ins to other events, so I can't very well put them in after the event, can I?

I'm only in chapter 7 right now, but I am saving some things specifically for chapter 12. I've known for months now I need to rework that entire chapter. It's mostly a telling of things happening, rather than a showing. It's vitally important to me to fix that, even though it was not one of the suggestions my editor had made. I probably won't get there till next week, but if I work really hard I could be done before the end of the month.

It's important to get aspects of your story in the right order, or it may not make sense to the reader. You want your story to be smooth (something I'm still working on) and flow from one thing to the next without the reader pulling back and going, "what? where did that come from?" It's also important, in a series at least, to draw from the previous book enough to tie it in without relying on it, and to give clues to the rest of the story that will come in later books. It's critical you don't leave out a key aspect from the first book in the second book. Yeah, I did that, too.

Here's hoping we can all find a place for everything.