Getting over the hump

Do you have a hump in your book? A chapter that you revise over and over again, trying to get it just right and feeling like you can't move on until it is? Well, I do. It's called chapter 8 (guess I should be glad it's not chapter 13, eh?). Chapter 8 sits about a quarter way through the book and it's been the stitch in my side for the past three weeks. I'm in my third round of revisions and there really is no skipping over the chapter now to move on to other stuff. I've been there and done that. I need to revise this chapter close to the way it will be when it gets sent out for querying so that the chapters which follow all fit nice and neat. So why has this chapter been so tricky? Well, for starters it's kind of slow moving. The premise has been exposed and now it's time to introduce some background and ordinary day stuff. Can anyone say BORING!! Yep, this is the problem. There really is no way to get around it because I do need to show Nikki at school with her friends - she's a rebel, but even rebels have to go to class. :) This is also the first time that we'll meet her ex and the ever-present side kick, best friend, Kay. Part of the problem is that it can be done in so many ways, AND while all of these characters are introduced some background needs to be included as well.  Up until this point I've been pretty good at sprinkling in the background as unobtrusively as possible, but now at a quarter of the way through the book, some explanation needs to start happening. Of course, I don't want to do too much telling (ahem, draft 2), and I don't want the introduction of the minor characters to take up too much time (ahem, draft 1) but at the same time, these things need to happen. Hence, the hump.

The good thing about humps? Once you get past them, you can coast for awhile, and this is just what I did over the weekend. I got through chapter 8 and then revised the next three chapters in quick succession. I'm now halfway through draft three (woohoo!), and hoping that this is the last time I'll have to revise this chapter to this extent, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

In other news, the stock market has been nice to me lately. I picked up 5 new stocks last week and three of them have gone up roughly 7% (one almost 20%). That's suh-weet! But I'm not going to buy anything new again for a while because I smell a correction in the making, plus summer is near. Big time investors take vacations over the summer, so I don't think there's going to be much upside once we get past May. For those of you not into the market, sorry for the non-writerly rambling - it's a thing I do.

Ciao!
Angie