This is Not a Post on Detail

I was going to write a post piggybacking Maven Erica’s Monday post on detail. I thought we’d try a workshoppe in which you could post passages showing us detail using a setup I provided. Sounded fun! And then the following happened.

Monday I got some great feedback on the first 55 pages of Notorious, which I was planning to enter in the Indiana Golden Opportunity contest. Then, I got feedback from a contest I entered (and didn’t final in – Monday was an up and down sort of day, but mostly up overall – hey, I finaled in the Summer Sizzle!). Wonderful comments from all parties, despite a giant problem with the opening scene and one of my main characters. Both are fixable, but how does fixing them affect the rest of the ms, which I am nearly halfway through final polishing? Ack!

I got up Tuesday morning and immediately attacked the opening scene, eager – no excited - to incorporate the suggestions I’d received. First off: remove leftover plot point from the very first version of the book. Easy enough. Second: fix the implausible backdrop situation. Takes some finagling, but doable. Uh-oh, the h/h can’t meet in the same way. What about their banter? What about their delicious, lovely banter? For the love of God, WHAT ABOUT THEIR BANTER? Everyone liked the banter so I have to find a way to work it in. Okaaaaay. Deep breath. Uh-oh again. The hero’s first POV scene has to change and everyone loves that scene. I. love. that. scene. It shows his character perfectly and sets up a call back in a later scene. Argh! Another deep breath. Maybe I can still keep it if I just tweak the order a bit. No problem. We’re still working here, people. Now I need to pepper in the secondary character’s link to the heroine a little better so there aren’t questions about her. No problem. Except, as I type, I suddenly realize the removal of the leftover plot point ruins my villain’s motivation! End excitement. Begin teeth gnashing and hair pulling.

And here I am. I think I’ve actually figured things out, with the primary thing being, why am I freaking out over this? There are lots of reasons and I’m not going to bore you with them, because they’re not that important. The important thing is that I have a plan. I am nothing without a plan (right Maven Lacey?). For awhile today, I thought my plan had been obliterated and that was crushing, but plans are meant to be changed. Plotters probably hate hearing that, but I think it’s invariably true. Flexibility is key. I’m a plantser myself (I’d like to claim this as MavenSpeak, but others have used this term long before I). I plot and pants and know that sometimes things do not turn out as I’d planned, but that this is maybe for the best. Hey, I never planned to get married at 21. I was going to go to grad school and travel. I also never planned to have kids. Not that I didn’t want them, I just didn’t pick out names or plan it (okay, in the interest of full disclosure, we really, really did plan – God did we plan – once we decided we wanted to have them, and even that didn’t go according to plan).

What’s my point? Oh yeah, these blog posts are supposed to have a point. The point is, life deals you some cards and you just play them the best you can. You can make it work. After all, this was supposed to be a blog post about details.

Your turn: How do you deal with unexpected change? Do you cling to what you know and kick and scream the whole way? Or do you embrace it with giddy excitement and see opportunity where others see soul-crushing disappointment?