The righteous glow of vindication.

I handed off the SEN to two readers. Reader Number 1 finished last night, causing me to request Reader Number 2 to hold off on reading.

Reader Number 1 and confirmed every single thing about what I suspected was wrong with that monster. The case story is lame, the slash plot hops and skips but never really gets running, the two scenes I personally hated most add nothing to the story, and what is it with those characters who turn out to be irrelevant, anyhow? The story drags, it's amazingly dull, especially the first couple of pages, and most of what's in there doesn't go anywhere.

As Lynn rightly points out, no one reads my stuff to see me making a lame attempt to write serious drama.*

Also, she's mad at me because a couple of passing OC's got clonked on the head from time to time. Sheesh. Fandom is full of stories where someone gets beaten up or even killed, especially secondary OC characters. I clonk someone on the head and she gets all bitter at me.

Okay. I'll admit I hadn't actually thought of that. The fact that I've never written anyone getting hurt before, so she wasn't prepared for it, I mean. But...I mean, you tell people and you tell people and you tell people that something Is. Not. Funny. and then you get someone making beady-eyes at you because it's true? Is that fair?**

Anyhow. I'm already over it. I was over it ten seconds later, because she also supplied a lot of other really exceptionally good feedback and suggestions.

Remember when I told you something had to go? Case or slash, because there wasn't room for both in the story? The case story lost the toss.

I started last night. I have to delete at least a third of the text (I got 10k out of it without breaking a sweat last night), rearrange what's left, compress the timeline for the case investigation, come up with a new climactic scene and a new resolution for all the different threads.

Oh, and the "case story" I have doesn't work, so whatever I keep of it, has to be completely rewritten.

Also, the characterization? She never did figure out who was who. So something has to be done about that.

I'm posting this as an object lesson to y'all. I have been telling you there were major problems with this Stupid Effing Novel and no one believed me.

I feel vindicated. Hah! I told you so!***

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* You have to know she totally didn't say that.

** On the other hand, she's the person who wasted two evenings of her life reading it, so she had a right to be aggravated. In spite of what I said, I'm sure she expected this story to be like my other stuff and it wasn't. Not even remotely.

*** Glancing over this before I post it, it occurs to me that I need to stress one thing very strongly. I am glad I got the feedback I did.

I wanted to write a long, plotty story. I did.

It sucked. I wasn't surprised.

The urge has passed.

Now I'm interested in seeing if it's possible to salvage any part of this monster and beat it into some kind of decent narrative.

It's about the process, you see. It's about the writing.

Also? It's good to know that all of the stuff I've written previously wasn't just wasting some unexplored talent for Gritty Drama. No such talent exists.