Writing Update: Rewriting Catch

I’ve been re-reading and polishing each of the Across the Line novels I’ve posted here for public reading — Hopscotch, Red Rover, Twenty Questions, and Catch. But Catch is notably late to be put online, and that’s because as I re-read it, I realized why I’d stalled out on the series: I’m not entirely happy with it. Too much action, too many explosions. It feels like an action movie that cares more about special effects than character development … which is the kind of snide remark a critic might make about my work but is a terrible thing for me to think about my own efforts!

As a result, I went back to re-read my array of randomly saved writing notes about it and found, tucked away in a dusty digital folder like an old tomb, a 130-page, single-spaced first complete draft (titled Tag). I re-read that one and liked large parts of it, but by the end I realized it contained too much character development and not enough action. Clearly my newer complete draft of Catch had been an attempt to fix that problem, but I’d gone too far in the other direction.

Now I’m working on integrating the two drafts, which after an outlining session today I think can be done … but it’s going to take me a bit to figure out how to smoothly graft the best of each two together and then buff out the seams. It might be the longest of the four novels as a result, but we’ll see.

And yes, I’m already starting to jot down ideas for a fifth novel in the series, although I should probably finish Bone Horse first, even though it’s a spin-off. How many novels can one writer juggle at a time? Probably none, if they really want to FINISH one of the novels. So I’m focusing on pulling Catch together (maybe by the end I’ll decide Tag is the better title, after all?) as my first priority … in-between preparing for fall semester, of course. Hello, August!