Tag: The Absolute

Rewrites DONE!

~ Author R.K. Gold ~ 2 Comments

I can’t believe I’m about to say this but I’ve officially finished my rewrites. Yes, that’s right, the rewrites for The Absolute are done! Now the fun part begins. Actually having to edit this. I know rewrite Sound like editing, but really all I did was delete one rough draft and replace it with a slightly better rough draft.

I am going to do things a little differently this time. Usually, I sit on a manuscript for a while before I start editing it. But I also have a tendency to sit on m a nuscript forever and never edit it. I’m going to start edits this upcoming weekend (probably Friday).

I’m just ready to get into the next phase. All the ideas are still so fresh. I have a lot of small details that I wrote at the end of the book that I want to hint at towards the beginning and the middle. Some of his quirks became less prominent later on and I have to decide if I want to keep them or get rid of them.

Why was this so important? I basically took 50k words of poetic non-sense, deleted it, and replaced it with 70k words following an actual plot. It may not be the best plot, but it has characters that actually are there for a reason and it has some direction.

For the rest of the week, I am probably going to work on QT Pi projects. Mostly the Monster Hunter series.

As always, thanks for reading!

Food for Food. . . I mean thought. . . no actually I just mean food. Food > Thought

~ Author R.K. Gold ~ Leave a comment

Yeah, enjoy reading that title! In all seriousness, why are the best foods so “unhealthy”? I put unhealthy in quotes because I want to justify my love of cheese and bread until the very end but seriously, why can’t we just fast all day and then eat 1000 calories of fresh bread and cheese every night? It tastes so good! It makes you so happy! And you still stay under that 2000 calorie boogeyman that haunts your subconscious every time you debate taking a handful of almonds.

This isn’t the point of this post, but as you can tell, food is on my mind. I just downed an avocado so I’m full of energy.

Anyway, I just published my first story under my second pen name. For those of you with KU you can enjoy the title for free by clicking here.

As for my main writing projects let’s talk about The Absolute.

This book is being so rude to me. In a matter of 3 hours, it has filled me with crippling self-doubt, mild self-loathing then renewed self-confidence. It’s strange re-writing a book because it carries all the weight of editing but all the crappiness of a rough draft.

My main complaint with it is tension. There are times it fills me with emotion, and there is plenty of engaging dialogue, but holy shit what is actually going on in this book? I was half tempted to scrap it at 2 in the morning when I was writing a scene between Peter and Father Shine.

I’m so focused on giving every character a purpose, I sorta forgot the main character needs to give the reader a reason to care. Heres his story so far in a nutshell. Peter’s parents died five years before the book starts. His Fiancee died four years before the book starts. He is in a slump, unable to paint because all he can see when he tries to tap into his imagination all he sees is a pack of butterflies leading him to a low stone wall. Behind the wall is a garden, and behind that a forest.

He can never reach the garden though, his mind won’t let him cross over the wall so he’s in a creative block because all he can put on a canvas is a half-completed painting of butterflies.

With his gallery running low on money, his manager/business partner gets him a commissioned gig to paint a mural on the concrete wall connecting the new reformed chapel to the traditional church. They built the wall and the playground between these churches to encourage children of different beliefs to still play together.

Peter feels out of place back home, and gets into some funny adventures, but the overall plot feels so relaxed. I mean he completes the mural around 50k words in and faces another challenge the town and his business partner created for him.

Ultimately, it turned into a story of a big city artist falling in love with his hometown again and I’m worried it doesn’t offer any excitement. It’ll just be like a video camera on the main character’s shoulder, watching him fall in love with his town, then it ends.

I guess I’ve re-entered the self-doubt portion of today’s program.

What do you all think? Is a story about relationships (family, friendship, and romantic) complete or are those just events that are supposed to happen around the plot, not just make up the plot itself?

Editing: The Absolute

~ Author R.K. Gold ~ 1 Comment

Well, I’m finally doing it. I’m finally editing what will become my first full length novel. That is not to say I am done with novellas. I am rather fond of how direct I can be with my storytelling in shorter works, but it is exciting to see something a little larger on the horizon.

That being said, I am not sure if I picked the right manuscript to start with. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I hoped to edit four of my manuscripts this year, most of which I wrote the rough drafts for last year.

While I was expecting my 130k word satire to be the one to cause the most headaches, the Absolute has turned out to be no walk in the park. Though just 56k words, most of them are being deleted or completely re-written.

The direction I am taking the novel is much different than the rough draft’s original story. When I wrote the initial draft it was the story of a man seeking a path to god to unleash his wrath. He wanted to kill god and at times read like a fever dream.

The re-writes are turning it more into a crisis of faith. A painter at a crossroads, returning home when he is commissioned to paint a mural next to the new chapel. The painter does not have the best memories of the town, though for the most part it’s not the town’s fault, and when his fiance died (four years before the book takes place) he is more than happy to do his best to try and float through life.

While the initial draft was a more physical fight with supernatural entities, the newer one is more about the conflict of legacy and how one wants to be remembered. If it is too late to change how we are perceived and is it too late to find happiness?

Though it’s tiring, I am happy with the optimism I will be able to include in this new draft and the connections with characters my protagonist will be able to make, whereas in the initial draft it was all about finding a path and characters were seen more as tools to get from point A to point B.