Splintered attentions

I'm going to hold off writing the last chapter of Ghostlander.  I want to let it percolate in my subconscious for awhile.  I have a general idea. 

Meanwhile, Paul Carrington came by and said that he did like the latest version of Faerylander better.  The one problem was that he didn't quite buy the relationship between Parsons and Sandra.

Which coming after Dave Goodman's comments that he didn't quite buy the relationship between Cobb and Lillian, makes me worried about relationships.

Now that I have the actual structure of the book nailed down, maybe I can go in there and try to make those relationships stronger.  Maybe writing an earlier scene for both of them.

Paul said I'd lost some of the consequences of the battle by not developing some of the characters the way I had in earlier versions.  But the earlier versions were a problem in structure -- that is, the scenes where the characters who were later killed were introduced were scenes that didn't work for the overall book.

In other words, things are lost when they are cut.

I might be able to introduce a couple of characters that are later killed in the battles and not disrupt the structure of the book, so I'll give that a try.

And work really hard at making the relationships between Cobb and Lillian; and Parsons and Sandra more believable...

What's interesting to me is that the problems I had with the book was that it had too much, that it was slow and went sideways too much.   And now I'm told I cut too much.  Neither reader seemed to think the pace was too slow.  So I'm going to allow myself to insert a few more scenes that I cut, especially as they relate to "relationships."

Meanwhile, I want to go through Dave's critique of Faerylander and Bren's critique of The Dead Spend No Gold.

So I'm feeling somewhat splintered.  The best writing comes from being focused.  I probably should pick one of the books and finish it before I start work on the other book, but the logistics are such that it would add weeks if not months to the process.

Oh for the days when all I did was write!