Monday, January 23, 2012

Is it Really the End of January Already?

My first post of 2012, and we're already in the last full week of January. Where did it go?

Well, I'll tell you. It went into reinsulating my attic (myself), and lots and lots of revision, and some querying, and many many discussions that began with, "You know, we live pretty far from the kids' school, and our old house is  a lot of work - maybe we should move," and ended with, "I love our house."

We had a lot of plans for this house when we bought it. Plans that involved an addition and at least one more washroom and drywall in the attic. Needless to say, we hadn't really costed out those things, and then life happened and five years later, here we are in the same house with all this potential - exactly the same potential it had when we bought it.

We could call it a day, but we still love the house. It has a solid foundation, a nice layout, and the rooms are in proportion to one another. It flows nicely, and feels balanced. But some of the rooms aren't used as well as they could be, and there's still only one washroom. So we did some rethinking, and some re-enivsioning. We revised our idea of what this house can be. And a year or two from now, it's going to be AMAZING. I can't wait.

If you have a manuscript lying around that hasn't really gone anywhere - maybe the plot is solid but there's a character missing who really needs to be part of the story, or maybe the setting needs more personality, or maybe there's something else that needs to be changed - try re-envisioning it. Try looking at it from a different angle, and maybe you'll see how to make it work.

Happy revising.

5 comments:

  1. Great post! Sometimes taking a step back and reevaluating something by looking at the big picture is the way to go.

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  2. The house versus story analogy. Gotta love it. It's apt from every angle.

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  3. The trick is to try and look at things (manuscripts or houses) with new eyes. Time usually provides this.

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  4. Great advice! Good to have you back, Ishta. I missed your blog!

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  5. Glad you're figuring out how to make your house what you want. Glad you're back.

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