Reality Check

I forced myself to continue reading my novel aloud yesterday, and though I didn't get much further, I did find a few scenes that didn't completely reek. That's not much of an endorsement, but it's perhaps a small glimmer of hope.

The problem is, I can't simply remove the bad scenes, because they provide continuity. I honestly don't know where to go from here.

This may seem dumb, but I think the novel would read better if I had broken it into chapters. The reason I didn't do it was, well, the story was a continuation of a novella I'd written, and novellas don't have chapters; plus, I really didn't know how far I'd get before giving up, so I dispensed with the whole formatting setup. But chapters provide a natural break, whereas right now the story reads like an exhausting tale of, "then this happened; then this". There's no breathing room. A new chapter helps the reader refocus and anticipate something new. The book, if it ever becomes a book, will have chapters, of course. It just doesn't now.

It's not as if I didn't find myriad problems yesterday. I absolutely did. The question is, are they worth going back and fixing? Shoot, I even dispensed with noting them; they're so numerous.

Where the story seems to perk up is when the MC's superstar friend comes into the picture. Those scenes come alive, I think because she's so interesting and unpredictable. I joked once that the novel should be about her. Too late.

I'm just beginning to read "The Great Iowa Disaster" section, which I was so proud of at the time. Delirium again. So far, it's not terribly exciting. 

I may just chalk this one up as "my great unpublished novel", although the "great" part would be quite a stretch. At least in the olden days, a would-be author had an excuse for not publishing ~ they couldn't get an agent. Since anyone can self-publish now, I can't fall back on that. I also can't accidentally "lose" it, since a copy of it exists on the cloud.

My disappointment isn't quite as keen as it was the other day, but if I want to make this story publishable, I'll need to...(I don't know what).