Revenge of the Subconscious

I continue to be ridiculously productive, with 5 hours of real writing work yesterday, and today I've already been to the bank, post office and library and have taken a shower after all that walking in the heat.

I think my subconscious has struck again. That weekend craving for a fantasy romantic comedy may have been a signal about the book I'm working on. It's not what I would really call a romantic comedy, as it's neither truly romantic nor a comedy. It does have some romantic elements, although the development of the relationships isn't the core story. Maybe it's more accurate to say that it establishes romantic possibilities. And it does have humor, although it's not as much an outright comedy as my existing series.

But I suspect that even though the two developing romances in this book aren't the main story and are pretty subtle, if the book gets published, those will be the elements that readers really respond to. One of the relationships is actually romantic comedy material, in that it starts with the two people clashing and at odds, then growing together as they go through some crazy stuff. The other relationship is less romantic, but it kind of has an old-fashioned screwball comedy set-up, with the down-on-his-luck working man hero and madcap, slightly crazy "princess" heroine. What I need to do is really play up and work with these elements, and that will also raise the comedy level. And I think that even if this book isn't technically a romantic comedy, it should kind of feel like a romantic comedy, if that makes sense.

So, I spent a lovely, blissful, not leaving the house day yesterday going back over the first part of the book with this in mind. I ended up killing the prologue I added earlier this year. It's stuff I think I needed to know in that level of detail so that I could know for sure what my characters had been through, but I realized that cutting it didn't take away anything from the book. It only delayed the real story by ten pages and partially spoiled one of the surprises from later in the book. I suppose it's future web site material.

And I didn't have to go anywhere yesterday, for the first time in more than a week. I have my first physical therapy appointment, for evaluation, on Thursday, and in the meantime, I just have choir Wednesday night. It's lovely to get back into serious work mode. As much as I'm enjoying playing with this book and making it as strong as possible, I'm already a little eager to get on to the next one.