Adventures in Crafting with Words

First up, why am I expanding and revising The Bookworm Next Door?   At first I seriously thought that The Bookworm Next Door (BND) was complete.  I had been working on it for over seven years and the overall story never changed.  I've had so many possible endings, but I kept coming back to the one I ended the story with.  Then I hit publish and the prequel short stories started appearing.  Then the questions of "what happened to Aimee?" Kelly?  What about Jennifer?  Wesley?  Gloria and Brady?  That was when I realized that BND wasn't finished.  What is different about the current Bookworm Next Door and the revised and expanded edition? Over a hundred pages of new material.  What caused Grace to be shy and quiet when she's the oldest of X number of siblings?  What caused Aimee to set her sights on David? Some names have changed.  A Beta reader pointed out that she was having trouble keeping Grace and Gloria...

Sometimes you sit down and realize something. Okay.  I sat down and realized something as I was writing Jennifer's part of the Bookworm story. The Bookworm Next Door wasn't finished when I self-published it.  It's a disturbing reality that faced me with two difficult decisions.  I could close the door on The Bookworm Next Door and leave it imperfect or I could rewrite it and make it perfect. I decided to do exactly that.  Perfect is better. So then I was faced with the daunting task of piecing everything together exactly the way it needed. There was also the fact that I was faced with continuity issues with some of the characters names.   Last night I finished The Bookworm Next Door.  It has all of the short stories combined.  It has new material.  It has a never before seen ending that only I knew was going to happen. Is The Bookworm Stories Series over?  No.  There's still Aimee Kirkland's story.  Grace and Kyle....

Sometimes the hardest things to write are unexpected.  I had no problem writing 5 pages of a troubling scene in Aimee's story.  I channeled a friend and several psychology classes I'd taken. I'd channeled what I thought I'd do in that situation.   I channeled my imagination. When Aimee's story comes out you'll know exactly what I'm referring to.  I'm trying to keep down on spoilers. But with Jennifer's story, a story mostly dealing with prom... . . . I can't figure out how her prom date asks her.  Although, I did get to look at prom dresses.  For research purposes of course. Still, not the oddest thing I've done writing research on.  That honor belongs to an outline for something that I'll never release.  Unless the person I gave a copy to randomly gives me permission. Or I ask if it's okay.  It's complicated.   And yet how Jennifer's prom date asks her is still more difficult to write than that 'silly stupid...